Mastodawn

nicole Apr 11

obviously you can go too far with this-- if you, say, hear a voice in your head, the fact that you hear the voice is something you know happened, but it doesn't mean the voice corresponds with something in external reality or that the voice is telling you something worth listening to

but you know you had the experience! if someone said "you did not have that experience" you know they are wrong

nicole Apr 11

oops you told me that something I know in my head isn't true, when things in my head are the only things I can be 100% sure are true-- I don't know you exist 100% but I know what's in my head is some form of experience being experienced by something

nicole Mar 16

folks they say to me, the world's a beautiful creation, but we know better don't we, this world's inherently corrupt, more and more people are realizing it every day, and the liberal demiurge doesn't like that one bit

nicole Feb 27

Points to Arabesque's "Midnight Dancer" for having the bravery to rhyme "Tequila" with "Venezuela", that's some solid pronunciation mangling right there

nicole Feb 26

i scream you scream we all scream

nicole Feb 23

It's interesting that you'll see people who don't believe in an afterlife or a god at all yet still have this deep-seated idea that they will be personally held accountable for their actions at the end and so need to carefully avoid their morality budget

video game religion, i hope to get a high enough score to get a continue so I can't vote for the lesser evil

@aud it seems much less sophisticated than all that to me. it looks like it's aimed at the market segment that thinks they're hot shit for knowing that infrared depth scanning is a thing (or at least that IR is involved somehow)

and are also dumb enough schmucks to think that because FaceID uses IR and because these glasses reflect IR, that transitively means this defeats FaceID.

I'm *sure* it doesn't, because FaceID isn't doing what a human being does and paying *lots* of attention to the eyes. It's a whole-datum classifier and it's pretty good except for that one time that it was SUPER RACIST because it works by digital phrenology basically

and more importantly if they did actually disrupt systems like these, they would say "this will absolutely fuck up your ability to unlock your phone do not wear them while using it" and not "this *may* frustrate FaceID 👉👈🥺"

@SnoopJ I think they shouldn't have this weak ass "reflective coating" nonsense. I want an active IR coating that blasts out IR energy the moment it feels the dreaded gaze of the camera. I see no reason this would go wrong and it definitely wouldn't melt your eyes.

@SnoopJ

because it works by digital phrenology basicallyreally is amazing how many times they keep inventing "racism but with computers"

@aud [glanging meaningfully at IBM] I mean uh, what else were they made for, really

@SnoopJ if I had a nickel for everytime someone referenced IBM's role in the holocaust today, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, etc.

(I also linked to Meredith Whittaker's essay on the intertwined history of computers and slavery)...

@aud I still gotta read that book but I know the broad strokes of EDC's enthusiastic assistance of the Holocaust, so…

…unfortunately, that puts me well ahead of the median peer

@aud the worst part is how it predates computer, even.

like, a bigot helped create the transistor because he was buttmad about the quality of the work his peers were doing

I mean no wonder the guys who cut their teeth under guys like Shockley ended up building The (Improved!) Racism Machine

@aud anyway, I imagine that defeating FaceID with active transmission would still keep transmission power pretty low?

Probably don't have to get much brighter than like, a Wiimote LED, "just" have to cover enough of your face with that irradiance which… probably involves wearing a mask that would be just about as good without the IR

@aud I hasten to clarify that I do not know what power output FaceID uses so maybe I'm way off with Wiimote but like… it just has to be about as strong as FaceID is, right?

@SnoopJ (oh yeah, for sure. I was just thinking of a super exaggerated blast of heat coming out of the eyes ala cyclops or something because I am being ridiculous).

@aud I bet it doesn't take a *ton* of power to blind the camera, if you can collate a narrow beam.

Probably enough to get into "go directly to federal prison" territory though.

@SnoopJ everything fun you can do with technology that doesn't hurt people gets you to sent to prison. this sucks.

@aud well in this SPECIFIC case, capping transmit power is pretty much what keeps people from getting hurt

a buddy of mine did his thesis on this actually, it turns out that safety limits aren't… always the best place to put your line in the sand.

more specifically, in the IR regime he showed it was possible to reach power densities with pulsed lasers to do supercontinuum generation IN THE VITREOUS HUMOR

@SnoopJ oh hell yeah (EXCEPT NOT REALLY WHAT)

@aud I don't recall the specifics but it might have been that certain total power was allowed to get through because it was assumed it would *stay* IR but uh no turns out not so much if you're unlucky enough

@SnoopJ turn your body into a glow worm with this one easy trick!

@aud although the relevant limits here are more banal, ye olde 5 mW cutoff

@SnoopJ oh jesus, looks like I have a lot of reading to do. aaaaaand wow, all it takes is two seconds googling him and goddamn

oh, he taught at Stanford. Things are coming together here...

@aud I know about him because of "The Idea Factory" which is a brilliant if you've got the bug for phones or even if you don't

@aud studying physics basically force-inducts you into the Ma Bell Fan Club

the transistor, the cosmic microwave background, Bragg diffraction, …

@aud unfortunately a lot of people learned the lesson from Ma Bell's success that "open offices are good" instead of "collaboration is good"

@SnoopJ oh yeah, even as a non physics kid, I know enough about Bell to be a fan of... well.

Certainly not all the people, given the dive I just took into fucking Shockley's life, but