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Nobody except OpenAI knows whether or not OpenAI trained on their data. So the burden remains on OpenAI here.

Incorrect, Buckmaster and Alpöge can comment if they had the ChatGPT "Improve the model for everyone" setting enabled or disabled.

If it was enabled, then their work was included in the training dataset.


In order for this to be the strong evidence everyone also has to believe that the setting is absolutely true. That some logging from some piece of the system could not also leak the prompt information in such a way that it could have been included as training data. Perhaps the design of how data is collected for the training dataset is so rigorous as to make this a practical impossibility. But, it's asking a lot without sufficient detail to completely exclude from possibility that one setting is all that could possibly have been absolutely load bearing in deciding if the other researcher's active efforts meaningfully contaminated the internal model.

At least, as an ignorant outsider, that's how it seems to me.


As I understand it, that setting does not prevent them training on user data, just which derivatives are used (i.e. just PII scrubbed vs certain types of synthetic summarization)

That is an absurd and entirely untenable position that breaks with approximately all western conventions.

Only the CIA knows whether or not they're actively covering up reptilian space aliens exerting control over the US government. Therefore the burden of proof remains on the CIA to prove that they are not actively participating in such a scheme.


I don't understand, OpenAI can just say: "yes/no we did/did not train on your data". It's not a hard question to answer, and it is a question that OpenAI should be able to answer for all data we feed into ChatGPT.

> It's not a hard question to answer

I didn't realize you had insider knowledge about their systems. Do please explain for the class.

As I understand it they will only have trained on his data if he consented to it. Do you have evidence that they do otherwise?


This whole discussion is about evidence. That's not proof and it is not certain, but it is evidence pointing into the direction that OpenAI might be doing something that they're strongly incentivized to do. What kind of "evidence" do you see as necessary?

When someone authors a paper, is it on others to proove the author did not use their work as inspiration? No, it is on the author to give credit where it is due. You guys are acting as if it its legal issue, when it is not.

You can never prove the negative.

I agree it's an issue but maybe we are going at it from the wrong angle. Why just be scared of the Chinese? We should protect ourselves from both domestic & foreign adversaries.

Any electronic device with vision, sound, or radio communications capability should be required to be source-available or at least independently audited. Proprietary code must run in sandboxed black-boxes that can't directly communicate/interact with the outside world.

Sounds like an impossible ask? Well, banning Chinese robots/routers is also an impossible ask.


That's their point though. Basically no modern phone/laptop/tablet other than Apple offloads audio decoding (of any codec) to hardware. You can check this on Android phones by installing the Codec Info app.


Snapdragon chips do (used in many/most androids), Samsung own exynos also does iirc.

If the OS/platform doesn't use it that could be another thing, but those chips do offer audio coded decoding, including aac


Yeah no. All chips in computers, tablets, etc. have hardware decode. Intel chips have hardware decode. AMD, Arm, Raspberry Pi, what have you.


I’m pretty sure no x86 chip has hardware decode/encode for audio. Together with dGPUs, they tend to have decoders for JPEG and decoders/encoders for H.264, H.265, AV1 and sometimes VP9.


They have hardware decoders for JPEG? I have never heard of this and it seems overkill considering how simple it is to decode.



There’s also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardwar...

Seems like Nvidia doesn’t support JPEG in NVDEC.


There is absolutely a crisis of bad health outcomes due to relatively simple home medical procedures. E.g. People take Tylenol at home thinking it is safe, meanwhile Tylenol posionsing is the second most common reason for liver transplantation worldwide.

The reason we accept these crisis is due to societal, cultural and religious tradition/pressure. IMO, in an ideal world, many of these things should draw additional scrutiny.


FUTO Swipe supports ClearFlow, which is exactly what you are talking about, a keyboard layout optimized for swiping: https://clearflowkeyboard.github.io/

https://github.com/futo-org/futo-keyboard-layouts/issues/163


I switched to ClearFlow a month or two ago after learning of it on Hackernews. It is available in GBoard.

I'm happy with the switch. Like any keyboard switch (I've gone from Qwerty to Dvorak and now a Colemak-dh derivative with about ten years on each) it takes some time to learn the layout. Overall I'm happy with it though and there are less frustrating misinterpretations and corrections needed.

This post was swiped on it with only two corrections and the second one was my fault as i misremembered a key location.


If you don't mind, how do I get ClearFlow in gboard? GBoard on Android only has language selections, not keyboard selections.


There's a section [1] on the page that has instructions, and video [2] too. I had to select the English (US) language to get the option to select ClearFlow.

[1]: https://clearflowkeyboard.github.io/#section_activate [2]: https://youtu.be/rSfbvE9cEKE?si=NbJC93sTiOHqw4lX


Thanks. It's available only for the US layout, not UK.

I'm writing down a few impressions: - the layout is unusual, but I get the motivation. Distances are minimised and letters are arranged so that ambiguity is removed. - although I'm very slow, I haven't made a single mistake so far. Clearflow allows me to swipe much more accurately than stock gboard. - the square keyboard layout unfortunately means that half the letters are constantly hidden behind my thumb. As I'm unfamiliar with the layout, this means that before swiping a word, I have to look at the layout, memorise letter locations and plan the movement - since I write in multiple languages and Clearflow is available in only one of them, I would have to memorise a completely new layout for a language I write in only half the time.


Hi, Yes I'm in the same boat as you - had to switch to US language instead of UK. I've been addiing the anglisised versions of words to my dictionary as I go along so it's becoming less of an issue over time. Maybe I'll switch to FUTO in order to not have to deal with this anymore. Gboard has one nice feature though in that I have multiple languages enabled so I get correct predictive completion in non-English languages.

For learning ClearFlow, I used the Games app available from the "Clearflow Games" section on their website: https://clearflowkeyboard.github.io/

I also have the issue of the thumb getting in the way so I spent a couple of days playing the games to get my layout memory up and then it became usable without frustration and I'm not looking back now although I occasionally still forget the odd letter location.


FUTO has a "multilingual typing" setting, maybe that's what you're looking for?


Tap on the language, a scrollable list of layouts comes on top.


I learned something. Thank you


I have been a ClearFlow user for over a year now. Generally I like it, but there absolutely are still common words that are hard to input consistently. The THEA cluster has given me no shortage of problems. Still a fan though.


Does It work for non English languages?


[flagged]


I actually can't find the answer on either of the linked pages, so it would be good to know. And I think people's experience is more important than the claims in these discussions.


Me neither. I added clearflow on gboard for English (US), but it didn't give me the same option for German.


Only defined for the default, english charset: https://github.com/futo-org/futo-keyboard-layouts/blob/main/...


And anyway, there's no keyboard on earth who can handle multi-language typing in a sane way. They either mash all languages together, or force random layouts on you, or... I stuck with GBoard because I just hate it less than others, so when I found this topic I thought yay let's try - until I read it's only for English. So there.


I really like how gboard handles it. It figures out what language I'm typing from the first couple of words and prioritises those. This way I can even mix languages within the same sentence and it will still recommend the right ones. It's really really good.


Are you sure, like really sure you mean gboard? In my gboard I choose the language I want to type in, and that's the language for everything (settings, typing, recommendations...).


Thank you! That's amazing. I had no idea!

It's one of those things I've been wanting for a decade now, sounds like it's been around for about a year and a half.

Man, this is the kind of stuff I come to HN for.

EDIT: Ugh! I have an iPhone, and FUTO is Android-only, and ClearFlow is only available in the Android Gboard, not the iOS Gboard. :(


I'd like to know where did they get the stats ClearFlow mentions in their site (reducing backspace corrections by 37.5% and shortening finger gliding distance by 41.6%.) and see what method did they use to analyze those swipe patterns and create .

It could be interesting for applying it to different languages (or modified word corpus).


This is interesting. Though it doesn't seem like it'd translate well to a physical keyboard, leaving me with two different layouts to work with.

Maybe I'm mistaken though. Are there any physical clearflow keyboards? Are they any good, or does clearflow really only work well with swipe?


Using a physical clearflow keyboard sounds like a nightmare - they're just designed for very different input models


The thumb typing muscle memory does not translate to finger typing at all. Most Dvorak or Colemak users are comfortable using QWERTY on their phones. Clearflow really only works well with swipe.


No, not muscle memory, but at least the idea of knowing where keys are. I'd bet that non-qwerty typers mostly started with qwerty and possibly still need to use it on some occasions, so they remember.


I can't speak for everyone but I did an experiment to see if this was the case (I actually just wanted to switch to Colemak everywhere. But iOS doesn't support it natively and third party keyboard landscape is pretty bleak on iOS). I switched to Dvorak on my phone and got really comfortable with it. I was already comfortable with Colemak on my computer. Then I tried

1. Switching to Dvorak on my computer AND 2. Switching to Colemak on my phone

I already had a feeling that my Dvorak experience on phone wasn't gonna help typing in a physical keyboard and indeed that was the case. But also, the physical keyboard experience with Colemak didn't really help with thumb typing/swiping on the phone. On a physical keyboard, I can only type QWERTY at around 30WPM and Colemak at around 130WPM. However, on the phone QWERTY is my strongest layout (even when I can only type at around 50WPM with it).

Then there's the design philosophy. Colemak aggressively keeps the most used letters on the homerow. Paste a random Wikipedia article into this page and you'll see (https://www.patrick-wied.at/projects/heatmap-keyboard/ alternatively, here's the heatmap for the introduction to today's featured article about Augustus: https://postimg.cc/9RT8P4N6). On a phone this means that a lot of the times you'll be swiping back and forth horizontally. Resulting in identical swipe paths for a lot of common words.

And if Clearflow was ported to a physical keyboard, most of your fingers won't be doing any work and the active fingers will be doing weird tap dance. The position of spacebar (undoubtedly the most used key on the keyboard) to the sides where you'd be using your pinky would make it an RSI machine.

My point is that if you're comfortable with QWERTY on the phone, that's not because you're comfortable with QWERTY on the desktop. That's because you got used to QWERTY on the phone.


I'm using Colemak on my phone, but can't get used to it on my desktop, so I'm stuck with QWERTY! :D


interesting, tying this. thanks


> For example preventing people who have repeatedly been convicted of violence ("hooliganism") from entering sports stadiums.

You should't need face recognition to do this (as it seems stadiums are already successful in banning people who haven't paid from entering the venue).


That's not the full source code of the browser, that only includes the core engine. The UI is still closed source.


It's not like glass syringes are out of production though? They are still pretty cheap, I get them for $0.50 each from China.


Surely there is a cost to sterilising too.


I've also been dabbling in this recently in an attempt to avoid buying SodaStream syrups (which are on the BDS boycott list).

Tips for working on sugar-free recipes: In some countries (like Canada), soft-drink manufacturers are required to disclose the exact amount of each artificial sweetener they use in the drink. So you can easily grab those numbers from Canadian product listings for use in your own recipes. E.g. 355ml of Diet Coke contains 131 mg aspartame + 15mg ace-K.

Also, aspartame can be difficult/slow to dissolve. It dissolves better in solutions with a low pH and a warmer temperature.


People are always so laser focussed on the latest trendy thing, but why not just boycott all huge corporations/organisations? It’s a much simpler rule that achieves the same thing and you have the added benefit of boycotting companies that haven’t had their corruption uncovered… yet!


I find it more effective to say, I'm avoiding product X for Y reason.

This starts a conversation more effectively with contacts rather than go full large company avoidance which is difficult for people to imagine, let alone act on.

I sympathise with what you're saying though.


This is actually addressed on the BDS movement website

https://bdsmovement.net/what-bds

Effective boycotts work on companies that are large enough to be noticed but small enough for boycotts to have an effect, while divestments and sanctions can be lobbied for larger institutions and governments.

I think just saying something like "why not just boycott all huge corporations/organisations?" can be a bit disingenuous when I think it's pretty well acknowledged that We Live In A Society that makes completely separating yourself from large corporations essentially isolate you from society as a whole


I Googled the BDS Boycott list at a glance...the top link (https://bdsmovement.net/Guide-to-BDS-Boycott) mentions a bunch of companies, including Sodastream. The immediate issue I see is that Sodastream is owned by PepsiCo, Inc. That immediately makes them complicit as well. PepsiCo was also facing a lawsuit regarding a partnership with Walmart for price fixing (https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2026/01/08/walmart-peps...) until the Trump administration threw it out (https://apnews.com/article/ftc-pepsico-trump-walmart-2cd8b42...).

I bring all this up to say that even if everyone boycotts sodastream, it won't do diddly to the actual folks responsible. I bet the same goes for others on that list. Boycotts also don't usually work in general. Most of the time it takes full on government intervention, lawsuits, etc. to change things.


Boycotts definitely have their limitations, but the Sodastream boycott seems to have had some sort of effect: https://www.timesofisrael.com/victory-for-bds-as-sodastreams..., though whether the intended effect was achieved is debatable...


"West Bank Industrial Zone" lol.

Call it for what it really is (not you, Times Of Israel). A factory inside an illegal West Bank settlement.


We do what we can, where we can, when we can.

Personally, I find it's less about the act (although financially depriving companies of my cash does make me feel good), it's about the conversation the act starts.

And I've seen it work, or help. Some among us will remember the boycott of South African goods during Apartheid.


>Most of the time it takes full on government intervention, lawsuits, etc. to change things.

That's the S.


Isn't this addressed on the same page you linked?

> We must strategically focus on a relatively smaller number of carefully selected companies and products for maximum impact.

My intentionally pick companies that are large enough to be noticable but small enough that they could actually achieve something with the amount of support they have.

If you look the other two letters of "BDS", divestment and sanctions are the strategies for larger institutions and government interventions

https://bdsmovement.net/what-bds


> In some countries (like Canada), soft-drink manufacturers are required to disclose the exact amount of each artificial sweetener they use in the drink

Can you share some links? Neither amazon.ca nor walmart.ca seem to show this.


>BDS boycott list

Looks like a great initiative. Anyone knows about a similar list, but for companies that support Russia and occupation of Ukraine?


BDS has been around since 2005 and organizing on a global scale.

Russia is under heavy sanctions so I doubt there's much more regular consumers can do to boycott if they live in countries compliant with those sanctions.

But there's an app that's (unfortunately) named BoyCat that currently mainly works for BDS. You scan a product and it tells you if it's directly or indirectly tied to a product on the BDS list. I heard they are trying to expand functionality to allow anyone to make and organize around a list

https://www.boycat.io/

TBH this is an idea I've personally wanted to work on for a long time. I think the boycott is an underrated tool for social change and tools that can make it easier to organize around them can be a really powerful force for good


There’s a really simple way that will protect you from any current or future corruptions/profit before people behaviour: don’t buy anything from any large corporations.

If you do this you also benefit from giving your money to real people and not contributing to huge amounts of waste and pollution.


Well done for the BDS attempt ... had to get my Mum to return her Sodastream as she had no idea.

But I have to say, this whole thing is enough to turn me off soft drinks altogether.

Maybe that's the point?

Those bags full of crystals look like something out of Breaking Bad, lol, but I appreciate getting rid of the sugar and caffeine.

Some sparkling water and some cordials or dilutes has to be ~ better!

Thanks for the reminder to switch!


They are constantly attacked because they prevent users from modifying the system configuration, not just app developers.


From the operating system’s perspective, everything is the user. Or everything is an app developer. Depends on perspective. Disambiguating reliably, in a way you’d consider reasonable, is not trivial (and arguably impossible).


Phone-style isolation is more like giving each app a separate user account. With that level of isolation and robust permissions, apps can do very little "on your behalf".


How do you do anything on a computer that’s not via an app of some description? Do you make arbitrary exceptions for the likes of zsh and chmod? How does the OS know that chmod was knowingly run by the user, and not by some “sudo wget” exploit?


> How do you do anything on a computer that’s not via an app of some description? Do you make arbitrary exceptions for the likes of zsh and chmod? How does the OS know that chmod was knowingly run by the user, and not by some “sudo wget” exploit?

I'm not sure what the purpose of the question is, because a unixy command line doesn't use phone-style permissions. I didn't say everything works this way.

If I installed photoshop with phone-style permissions, it wouldn't be able to invoke chmod and wouldn't even be able to access my downloads folder.

(Trying to tighten down a command line shell ends up being a tangent, but the short answer is that zsh itself would need to be trusted and hardened, and wget would not be allowed to run chmod. When it comes to downloading a script and then running that script on purpose, you probably just have to accept that doing so bypasses the permission system. Thankfully I very rarely need to do something like that.)


So you installed a text editor and wanted to edit /etc/hosts. Should the OS permit you to save your changes or not?

Now what should happen if the text editor decides to modify /etc/hosts without your knowledge?


The secure answer is that the OS gives you a trusted file picker and it grants access to that specific file to the text editor.

This works better with a GUI, but you can adapt it to a console too.


> Now what should happen if the text editor decides to modify /etc/hosts without your knowledge?

Pop up a UAC prompt of course. It worked so well for Vista.


I'm not sure I fully understand you. All those OSes try very, very hard to disambiguate between apps and the user itself?


A program touches a system file. Is it due to its own logic, or is it your editor saving a file?


Pretend you’re the operating system for a moment. What does “the user” look like, if not an app doing things?


If a user can do a thing, then an app can ask the user to delegate those permissions to it. And since 99% of users don’t read permission dialogs, the two ideas are completely equivalent. The only way to prevent an app from doing a thing is to make it impossible.


Even if users do read permission dialogues, how many Adobe users out there actually understand what modifying the hosts file means? There can be no informed consent if the person who's meant to consent doesn't have the tools to understand the information.


I think we agree.


You can put pressure on app developers to use standard installation methods that don't give unrestricted access.

Even if users don't read the permission dialogs, you can make one path a lot easier. And you can flag anything too tricky as malware behavior.

OSes are doing a bad job of this, but they could do much better. Linux is making the most progress on various package formats.


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