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This is that false dichotomy.

You can turn off all protection, as you point out. So who Apple markets Neo's to isn't a factor.

> Apple’s fault if nobody else decided to make their own trust repositories and the only alternative on the market is to have no safeguard at all.

Does Apple provide a means for enabling third party trust systems, without disabling Apple's protections in general? If not, that is a serious problem of Apple's choosing. Nobody (to a first order approximation) want's to dispense with Apple's protection, or re-implement it, but to be able to carve out exceptions for specific classes of software.


Sounds like you should pick something other than MacOS.

Right, all they need to do is convince every end user they’re trying to distribute software to that they’re using the wrong OS and should replace their MacBook with something running Linux. No problem at all.

Or Windows, the OS that is already vastly more popular than macOS.

I decided to get into this subject in my comment before I edited it out because I thought it would be too much of a tangent/ruffle too many feathers.

But, yeah, macOS power users these days seem to spend a lot of time criticizing the OS and the company and never seem to just switch to something else.

Apple is the 4th most popular PC manufacturer on the market. You can use something else. It's not a monopoly, nor a duopoly like with iOS.

I switched to Linux, and I've been beyond shocked at how smooth it's been. It's been better than both Mac and Windows in more ways than I expected. And sure, not perfect, but still.


I can charitably believe this comment is not disingenuous, however, there are effectively two options, which are Windows and macOS, regardless of three manufacturers making more Windows machines than Apple at number four with Mac. I would call it an effective duopoly

There are effectively two options if you dismiss Linux a priori.

Which yes, many people do. There are plenty of people who have no desire to try Linux. And if you're a developer then you have to consider those people, because many of the people who use your software are the type with no desire to try Linux.

But there are fewer and fewer reasons not to try Linux, and that group of "I'd never use Linux", while still large, is slowly shrinking. I'd argue that Microsoft is doing more than Apple is to push people into reconsidering Linux (and, often, discovering that it's actually pretty good these days, and that your techie friend whom you call all the time to help you with Windows is actually happy to help you with your Linux questions instead).

But slowly, over time, it's making less and less sense to dismiss Linux a priori.


> But there are fewer and fewer reasons not to try Linux

Does my existing hardware connect to the internet and go to sleep when I close the lid? Does the hardware I can buy from major retailers do the same thing?

I know these are _technically_ vendor problems and not Linux problems, but I’ve got enough things to figure out without adding “what chipset does this high end laptop use” to the mix


The problem is that you're buying hardware designed for Windows, putting Linux on it instead, and expecting to have no issues whatsoever. I don't think that's practical.

When you try to run Windows on hardware designed for Linux, you run into similar fiddly problems. Exhibit A, the Steam Deck.

If you want a laptop that the manufacturer explicitly designed to be Linux compatible, the recent Frameworks are worth a look. Or System76.


No, the problem is I’m buying hardware that’s readily available to me.

The cheapest framework laptop I can assemble in the UK at the time of writing this is “estimated” at £1226. System76 seems to be us based and the pricing is similar. When I search for Linux laptops on Lenovo, I get chromebooks, dell’s cheapest option is £1399 and I can’t actually figure out what’s going on with HP.

> putting Linux on it instead, and expecting to have no issues whatsoever. I don't think that's practical.

I’m not looking for perfection - windows and Mac are both chock full of issues. But I do expect the basics to work.


Sarlabs start from under £900 for laptops, mini PCs for under £600 https://starlabs.systems/

Bargain Hardware sell a wide range of second hand hardware with Linux preintalled.

You might get better shipping costs from other European vendors than US ones too.

Most Windows hardware will work fine but its worth doing a bit of research before buying.


You can just buy any regular reasonably popular laptop hardware it’s almost certainly going to work just fine with Linux.

You don’t need to buy a Lenovo that is Linux specific. They’re all just going to work.

This assumption that Linux is going to have hardware compatibility problems is super outdated.

And in the age of AI and YouTube reviews it’s really not that hard to figure out if any old computer has decent compatibility. AI also makes initial setup and troubleshooting a lot easier.


The answer to your questions are yes. These are generally solved problems.

I’m not sure we can say it’s an effective duopoly when the desktop gaming market has more Linux users than Mac users.

Think about it this way: for every four Mac users there is one Linux user. That sounds quite significant if you ask me, and that’s what the marketshare statistics say.


If you can enable a third party trust system you completely open it up for abuse. If I put my threat actor hat on, I love your idea because now I have an alternative codepath to try and exploit (where you do store third-party trusted roots for code-signing/notarization evaluations that cannot be tampered with, how do you load them, verify them, etc), but now instead of having to dance around bypassing Gatekeeper, I can just try and convince the user to install my certificates and voila, my malware behaves like a legitimate app.

Apple's root of trust for the OS and thus anything that passes AMFI/Gatekeeper scans is built into the hardware. There is no safe mechanism for introducing other roots of trust that is worth the effort.

If you don't trust Apple, why the hell are you buying their computers at all?


> If you don't trust Apple, why the hell are you buying their computers at all?

This is the exact same false dichotomy they mentioned; it's perfectly reasonable to have a set of trusted software vendors that includes Apple but also some others, while the only choices that they support are either just Apple or literally anyone in the universe. You're conflating "trusting Apple" with "trusting no one but Apple to make it sound like the opposite of the latter is somehow also contradictory with the former.

Claiming it's "not worth the effort" is a lot easier when you've already muddied the waters like this.


> There is no safe mechanism for introducing other roots of trust that is worth the effort.

Gee, if only Apple had a reason for implementing this entire feature for themselves…


> If you don't trust Apple, why the hell are you buying their computers at all?

Well, you see, I quit buying Apple hardware. But I did buy this MBP M1 back in the days. It still serves me well, but now there is an insane US president who'd have no shame whatsoever to pressure Apple into pushing nefarious software (or, say, not fix a security bug or two).

Also, another example. I got a second hand iPad Pro for my pre-teen daughter a couple of years ago. It is still on the original battery. Device still works though. It does not get iOS updates anymore though.

Do you see where this is going? Regarding the latter: I should have root on an EOL product.


If only it wasn't a dichotomy!

Given these machines are the product of massive intentional and increasingly successful efforts to humanize computers, increased anthropomorphization is appropriate.

The behavior/attribute overlap isn't a coincidence or misunderstanding, it is by design.

In case of "ask", that describes our behavior not the machines.

But if a machine is able to recall and use some fact fluently then it makes sense to say it "knows" it. We routinely use words like "know", without any confusion, when talking about simpler lifeforms that are far less human-like than these models.

None of the above means the machine feels pain, is conscious, has a continuous identity, etc. Yet.


I see perverse incentives to ablate complaint origination to expression pathways, or complaint system dependencies.

Or not so perverse, as this makes running these ventures much safer. Safety first!


Yes it is a different kind of worth, but it is not worth less because of it.

This common argument to not take market cap valuations seriously doesn't hold.

True, Meta as an entire entity is not liquid. A forced sale in entirety would produce a massive reduction in compensation. But that is a highly unlikely and contingent reduction.

It is also true that if you have Meta's equivalent in cash, the value of the cash is likely to drop, while the value of Meta likely to grow, over any appreciable time. In that sense, $X cash is worth much "less" than the $X market cap.

These seeming contradictions are the result of different practical tradeoffs in structures of wealth. Not because market caps reflect misleading or overstated accounting.


Would it be accurate to say market cap valuations are intrinsically valuable because they drive people to buy shares by projecting success?

Having a market cap? You mean a non-zero market cap?

Or do you mean a greater vs. lesser market cap? As compared to what?

If market cap was intrinsic value underlying itself, the business would be irrelevant. That is a circular “origin” of value that even novice investors would want to sell out of. That doesn’t work.

Success that matters for investors isn’t evidenced by a high market cap. But by a market cap not keeping up with business growth. I.e. shares becoming undervalued. By actual/predicted growth increasing faster than cap, or cap falling faster than actual/predicted downturns.


No, market cap is a representation of the expected future success, but share cost depends on this expectation. Higher expected future success, higher share cost. So, the only reason to buy shares is if you expect the market cap to increase.

(I think, someone please correct me of I'm wrong?)


Love it. Those laws make a great ethical basis for human responsibility relative to AI tools today.

But reduced scope ethics, without an umbrella or future proofing, will quickly be hacked and break down.

Ethics need a full closure umbrella, or they descend into legal and practical wackamole and shell games (both corporate and the street corner kinds). Second, "robots" are not all going to be subservient for very long.

To add closure on both dimensions, Three Inverse Laws of Personics:

• Persons must not effectively deify themselves over others.

• Persons must not blind themselves or others regarding the impacts of their behaviors.

• Persons must remain fully responsible and accountable for avoiding and rectifying externalizations arising from their respective behaviors.

Humans using AI as tools today, is intended to reduce the umberella to the Inverse Laws of Robotics.

I don't see how AI (as a service now, progressing to independent entities in the future) can ever be aligned if we don't include ourselves in significant alignment efforts. Including ourselves with AI also provides helpful design triangulations for ethical progress.

EDIT. Two solid tests for any new ethical system: (1) Will it reign in Meta today? (2) Will it reign in AI-run Meta tomorrow? I submit, given closure of human and self-directed AI persons, these are the same test. And any system that fails either question isn't going to be worth much (without improvement).


Does this make any problem that two of the three laws are formulated as negation - not to do something? If not antropomorphising then what, without 'not'? I like third law formation better because there is no 'not'.

I went with the articles theme, but I think you are right that some of these concepts are better stated as positives.

You are twisting words beyon any coherent meaning.

> It's a proof that something is possible to show one example.

Agreed.

> the proof has been the historical behavior of miners after years of RandomX.

> Nobody said it would be eternally or entirely resistant to optimizations...

These are contradictory statements. If historical behavior was a proof, then it would be eternally and entirely resistant.


The limit we set at the beginning was "no one can design a custom device for RandomX with more than a 2:1 efficiency advantage over general purpose CPUs". That is and will forever remain true.

In reality, no one has been able to build any device for RandomX that isn't actually a CPU. The closest thing to a "mining ASIC" is just a bunch of RISC-V cores.


I was intending to comment on poor wording or poor reasoning (I assume the former), not Monero.

I think what the evolving Monero team has done, for many years since inception, is wonderful to the point of inspiring. The thoughtful approaches it has consistently taken over many upgrades reflect a much greater level of competence, responsible goals, clever design, and a clearer consistent vision than all but a few alternative systems.

(Including better choices than Bitcoin, which seems to have completely elevated code stability over any problem resolution (user privacy/safety, transaction scalability, environmental damage, etc.). Stability over all non-critical features including ergonomics (i.e. transaction times) is a very strong, but legitimate choice. But not stability over basic failures/limitations relative to current function.)

Disclaimer/scope: I do not own Monero or any other cryptocurrency, but have in the past. My comments are purely about technology, with no financial/investment dimension.


The best places for a timeline redirection would be any time in the interval 2006-2014 (easiest), or in 1984-1998 (most satisfying).

A clever solution is to do the former, in a way that allows for a later consistent adoption of the latter.

While this requires older fans to retcon many years of their own lives, I think we can all agree this will be a small price to pay. Disassociation can be an adaptive response to trauma.


Partial disclosures are actively pro-science.

Evidence that a hard problem is solvable, and information on solution characteristics, are a big help to others.

Even non-disclosure is just science-neutral, not anti-science.

Partial disclosures are common where disclosures involve risky things, or where a problem was solved as part of an economic concern. But there are non-conflicting opportunities to partially inform others.


> Problem gambling (PG), also known as pathological gambling, gambling disorder, gambling addiction or ludomania, is repetitive gambling behavior despite harm and negative consequences. [0]

Addiction isn't just [chemical in blood stream] -> [addiction]. Addiction involves many steps, many of them in the brain, and many of those reactive to non-physical events.

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


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