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I'm holding on to my gas vehicle as long as I can because I really don't like the hybrid sad spaceship noise. I guess I could get it and disable the speaker but then that might void the warranty. The mechanic I go to tells me I can absolutely disable it and they will do it for me but they caution that it will void a warranty. I will continue to drive my old car until it falls apart.

> that might void the warranty

That would be explicitly illegal, it will definitely not void your warranty. It could hypothetically increase your liability if you are involved in an accident where you run over a pedestrian who argues that you were silent when you should have been making noise, but I am not sure this has ever been litigated.


when you injure or kill someone disabled who didn't hear your car and the investigators find that you disabled the sound, you will do time, it's literally a law

tire noise at slow speed is not enough

but some cars do seem to have a good noise and some a bad noise


It is rarely those in power that seek to reduce the power they have. I would support an amendment that the President may not pardon himself, his immediate family, or anyone acting on behalf of their administration.

It would be interesting if libraries also operated, say, cafes. Rules apply of course, but it might create a job and add something extra to a library.

When visiting Delft in the Netherlands I was extremely jealous that the library there not only had a cafe, but that the cafe served wine and the whole place was open until like 11pm. Haven’t encountered anything like that in the US.

YES! I encountered the same thing in Melbourne some years ago, a little cafe just inside the library whose profits 100% went to the library.

Oh wow I remember having the same feeling there. I had forgotten about that, thanks for the memory.

This would definitely be a great thing to add.

One thing that I don't like about American culture is that people are a little too hesitant about adding 'retail' into publicly-owned spaces. There's a reflexive attitude of that being A Bad Thing, even though most Americans who visit, say, Japan, really appreciate the various shops and kiosks they have in transit stations over there.

I also really enjoyed in Germany when at the top of some hike there'd be an inn+restaurant, something Americans seem to treat as nearly anathema.


Given the rest of American culture is intensely commercialised, I can see why there is a desire to protect the remaining non-commercial spaces.

My local library has an indepenently run coffee kiosk out front, the Council (local govt) own the facility and lease it to the operator, and presumably have some lease terms about allowable signage and branding.

I'd probably feel differently if it was a mega franchise like Starbucks or McCafe right at the entrance of a civic building.


I'd probably feel differently if it was a mega franchise like Starbucks or McCafe right at the entrance of a civic building.

I would too. It would be in the government's interest to chose an operator and lease out space, but only if it were done in the most fair manner possible. I have no clue about such matters, I confess, but I would not want to see the idea politicized; as in only certain people can apply, or preferences given to certain classes. Perhaps a little contentious in the short run, but in the long term it would be better.

And yes, alas, if it's Starbucks that has the best deal, then so be it. In fact, playing devil's advocate, what IF Starbucks said we'll give you 100% of our profits from this location on the sale of beverages?

Probably best that the library gets the money from leasing the space, and let's the local operator earn whatever they can.


I understand why, but it often results in bad outcomes. Part of why transit in other countries is better is often precisely because of greater commercialization. It's not just that it's more convenient for travelers, but also it makes money to fund transit.

this. and of course, the financial structure of these arrangements matters greatly. If the food places in the stations are making good money and the trains themselves are breaking even, you want the money to be flowing to the same people who run the trains, lest the train operator stops operating and the food places suddenly find themselves without customers.

This means you can't for example have both the train operators and the food places pay rent to some third party that owns the station, it has to be the transit company owning the station to benefit from the footfall to it


Near where I live, there is a library facility that has a cafe. However, it's not a regular book-lending library... it's run by the country library system, but it's actually a free coworking space. They even have a music room with 4 stringed instruments, a computer, and an electronic drum kit as well as a podcasting studio.

The British Library appears to have 7 cafes https://www.bl.uk/visit/eat-drink-shop

Japan already has a range of cafes that let you read books, manga, or listen to music

The library in my town had coffee, but it was more like a library that had a little coffee than a cafe with a library, if that makes sense.

There's a library in the neighboring suburb that has a little cafe in the lobby.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Central Library's top floor has a cafeteria.

I think at least a couple do have cafes here in Göteborg

It does help to be a journalist at a major magazine. Plebeians such as myself would be very lucky to get such a response.

100%. There's an implicit threat as a journalist -- I'll write this story up if I don't get my way.

True, but I have seen several projects recently that are focused on using Agents for Prior Auth Denial and though some are obviously biased e.g.: forus.com and simply trying to get more customers others are really just focused on resolving the denial.

Ah you jest, but your comment reminded me of the person whose home was raided by authorities for researching pressure cookers...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/01/new-york-polic...


This was my thought. Anyone who has taken secondary biology or chemistry possesses the knowledge, if not at least the ability to find the knowledge, to build all sorts of nasty things. Soil from a farm on slices of potato could yield anthrax spores, this is not specialized or even esoteric knowledge. This news from Anthropic just does not seem as spectacular as I think they might want us to believe, if anything it draws questions around having an AI that cannot be monitored.


There has always been the myth/rumor/belief that our devices are always listening. I wonder if this is an overton window moment, get people used to a device actually listening and slowly move to all devices listening.


The myth is that the devices are streaming audio back to be ingested into ad/recommendation algorithms, which is testable and generally not true.

I really wish these conversations would shift to the scarier truth: companies collect so much metadata on everyone that they can make pretty good guesses without processing what you're saying.

If you think "oh hey I was just talking about socks, how did they know to show me an ad for socks" it's likely because they accurately predicted based on your behaviors that you are highly likely to be in the market for socks right now.


Facebook/Google have a history of abusing hidden iOS APIs and exploiting weaknesses in the app isolation. It's plausible they found a way to read the output stream of the text-to-speech module from their apps, until Apple was forced to fix it.

None of the companies would have an incentive to report it.


> If you think "oh hey I was just talking about socks, how did they know to show me an ad for socks"

Or you’re talking about socks because of the previous ad for socks you saw. I suspect ads drive our collective behaviour more than we realize.


Or you were at a friends house and they googled socks yesterday

I'm not kidding about how insidious this is... there's so much metadata to exploit that these companies know who you're with, when you're with them, how often you're there, etc they don't even need to explicitly ask for location because they can pick it up based on network info. In some cases they probably could tell you more about a person than that person could tell you themselves.


genearlly not true except LG just got caught making it true


right, generally not true but still something we need watchdogs regularly checking


Our devices are always listening, if you have them set up to listen for hail words like "Siri" or "Hey Google," so I think the Overton window on listening already shifted about 10 years ago. The device actually recording/transcribing what it hears is newer, but you're right that it's becoming more and more normalized. With Granola, I think most people assume that any video call is being transcribed, even if there's no indication in the meeting.

Whatever side you come down on, privacy doesn't stand a chance against a small amount of convenience.


It depends what you mean by ‘listening’. If you look at how this actually works - it’s basically only ever looking for a certain waveform

‘Listening’ sort of implies intelligence is paying attention to what is said. It’s more ‘hearing’ than ‘listening’

There are documents on how these activation words work


To look for a certain waveform, wouldn't you need to obtain all of the mic data at all times? I think that's what's implied by "listening" here, but semantics are rarely an interesting discussion.


Yeah, I can see maaaany layers to have to differentiate between when discussing. E.g., for just a few random examples:

- The microphone always vibrates from the sound waves

- The microphone is powered in a way that the sound waves change electrical readings in some way

- The electrical readings are sent to another component reading them

- A component receiving the data does some kind of unbuffered processing related to triggered actions (e.g. a clapper or a activation wave)

- Some component temporarily uses a buffer of the data but not for permanent storage (e.g. live, unstored transcription for the deaf or a 'nevermind' after a triggered activation)

- Some component stores or sends data generated by the sound, but not necessarily the original audio or even any attributions of who (e.g. voice trigger web search sends the search query as text)

- Some component generates a stored copy of the transcription with attribution of who

- Some component stores the actual audio in a way that can be later replayed

I'd say this "sounds" like a mess to deal with, but then I'd be worried about falling into a category ;).


A Clapper[0] from the 80s "looked for a certain waveform", but definitely didn't "listen".

What the smart speakers and devices do with the keyword is closer to the clapper than an actual transcription.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clapper


Imagine you work in a three letter agency and discover that a certain guy has a vital role in an issue you are investigating. You don't want to just bug his iPhone from now on, you want to know everything he said over the past two years when around his iPhone.

The tech is already included in the iPhone, and storage requirements are in the hundreds of Megabytes, not more. The device is a black box on purpose, and my informed opinion is that they have been logging the ambient text-to-speech since a long time.


Hrm.. Data centers in space?


Huh.. Ok I'll play along. Could this be a translation issue? I confess the first thing that leaped to mind was.. could it be AI written? But I didn't want to leap to that but.. it's .. such a strange word that is not expected in .. I guess formal medical training.


AI changing words for watermarking purposes.


Isn't it more likely to be changing words to disguise plagiarism?

Update: looking at some of these, I think it is probably just poor machine translation.


Yeah some kind of translation issue. The papers seem to know what they're talking about, and I don't entirely get the AI gut feeling, only on the key words.


Good point, but I see lots of articles are using this "kidney disappointment" so maybe but.. holy toledo look at Impacts of Renal Transplantation and its Mental (2023) by Renan Kamath : “organ disillusionment,” “kidney relocate dismissal,” and “excusal of the moved organ.”


"waste can build to exorbitant level inside the blood, which harms both kidney and closures in kicking the bucket... "

"Regularly, it's more irritating than it is not kidding..."

(Pal and Gautam 2018)


Its like when you write a school essay and look up every second word in a thesaurus thinking it makes the essay better


Interesting! I started reading and there are so many sentences like “gauges an individual's gamble of kidney disappointment.”

Changing words for watermarking .. I understand why it may do that .. but .. what an unfortunate choice of where to do it.


The substitutions are transparent and don't change the meaning. What can possible go incorrectly?


What tin possible leave incorrectly?


IMHO the secret to making friends as an adult is to constantly put yourself in situations where you are forced to interact with others without any overarching elements of dating, sex, alcohol, or relationships. Like volunteering.

Also, it takes time. I've learned that faith comes from trust, which comes from time, and experience. The more I am around others, gaining experience with our personalities, we come to trust one another, and build faith in friendship.


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