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Is your interlocutor barking up the wrong tree, or are you missing the forest for the trees?

According to the OP:

> The program checks 55 properties spanning three layers: your browser (GPU, screen, fonts), the Cloudflare network (your city, your IP, your region from edge headers), and the ChatGPT React application itself (__reactRouterContext, loaderData, clientBootstrap).

I guess Firefox VPN will hide the IP at least. But what about the other data, is it faked by RFP? Because if not, the so-called privacy offered by this configuration is outdated.

You might be fingerprinted by OpenAI right now, as “that guy with all the Firefox anti-fingerprinting stuff enabled, even though it breaks other sites”.


>But what about the other data, is it faked by RFP?

Yes, RFP spoofs or at least somewhat obfuscates/normalizes GPU/screen/font info. The rest are integrity validations of the server/app, and not really identifying in any way.

>You might be fingerprinted by OpenAI right now, as “that guy with all the Firefox anti-fingerprinting stuff enabled, even though it breaks other sites”.

I'm not sure what the broader point you're trying to make here is. Is fingerprinting bad? Yes. All things being equal, I'd rather not have it than have it, but at the same time it's not realistic to expect openai to serve anonymous requests from anyone. Back when chatgpt was first launched you had to sign up and verify your phone number. Compared to mandatory logins, fingerprinting is definitely the lesser evil here.


I wasn’t thinking too hard about the distinction between an integrity check and an identifiable detail, and I guess it makes sense that you’d be okay with one and not the other.

My broader point would have been that if OpenAI can identify you even when using Firefox RFP, it doesn’t make sense to give them credit for letting you use ChatGPT with RFP enabled. But maybe I was making too many assumptions.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_articles_wit...

> Text generated by large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek etc. often violates several of Wikipedia's core content policies. For this reason, the use of LLMs to generate or rewrite article content is prohibited, save for these two exceptions

(The two exceptions are basic copyediting and translation).

I don't see how this is unintelligent and impractical. Wikipedia are trying to protect their core content policies ie. the very things that separate Wikipedia from Conservapedia, Grokipedia, RationalWiki or any other wiki. They are willing to grant exceptions in cases where LLMs are valuable.

And they even acknowledge that:

> Some editors may have similar writing styles to LLMs. More evidence than just stylistic or linguistic signs is needed to justify sanctions

So it seems like the ban is only intended to be used in extremely egregious cases.


> I've turned 12 minute videos back into the 5 phrases news it was based on.

Why not read the original news?

Okay, there are many reasons why you might not want to do that, such as ads, tracking, having to pay for a subscription if you only want one article, and just plain boredom. I wasn't trying to call you out, it was more of a question for society at large.

Why has it become more appealing to have a "content creator" turn 5 phrases of news into a 12 minute video and then have an LLM convert it back, rather than reading the 5 phrases?


It's not that it's appealing. For example, I wanted to learn how to bend notes on harmonica, but it wasn't working. That's not something you can really understand without video, yet most tutorials are 5-15 minutes long and only show the actual technique at some random point in ~30 seconds (just search 'how to bend on harmonica' and see). So I take the transcript t check whether it's a method I've already tried or something new worth watching, and I also get an extra explainer of the technique in text.

Also, with videos like "what X said about situation Y in discourse Z". Sometimes you're just curious, and you can't realistically extract that efficiently from a full one-hour speech on a geolocked, untranscribed mass-media website, so it's easier to summarize the transcript of the 12 min video directly.

As for why everything is 12 minutes long, it's most likely because content creation isn't optimized to teach you anything or be useful, it's optimized to maximize watch time so platforms can serve more ads to you. The pattern is: I got you intrigued in something; you want the answer? pay me your time.


Exactly. Those tutorial videos are fine if you are completely new to a topic, but if you are searching for something more advanced, then getting through all those introductory videos or those pretending to be advanced is so frustrating.

> Linux on a fridge? A toaster? A toothbrush? Yes.

I’m glad, even overjoyed, that no desktop operating systems are running on my toothbrush.

As for the other benefits, a large chunk of them amount to “you can customize <Y>”. Which is great for the audience of Hacker News, but is just a headache for anyone who doesn’t know about <Y>.

The most important item for society at large is probably the ability to revitalize older hardware.


I agree revitalising old hardware has big environmental and social benefits, but being able to customise things is also important for a lot of users. For example all those people who find big changes to the Windows UI hard to cope with would probably love to have something as slow changing as XFCE.

> just a headache for anyone who doesn’t know about <Y>

Its not a headache - they can just leave <Y> at the default

In many cases a lot of people will benefit from <Y> if they know about <Y>.


In the case of the New York Times, they have subscriptions and many are willing to pay for their work - but their subscriptions are not ad-free.


This is what killed my willingness to subscribe to most outlets. If I'm paying, I expect the page to load in under a second with zero tracking. Instead you get the same bloated experience minus a banner ad or two.


But you’re responding to a comment here, not there. So why not abide by the norms that prevail here?


My experience is that we end up debating the norms because this forum has different views than Wikipedia itself. That’s interesting to some but not to me so I’m opting out.

In addition, the answer to the question is already available so I want any question asker to put in a little bit of effort and if they’re not going to do that then I’m not really interested in talking to them since I prefer peer interactions to tutorials.


Not sure if this is an example of something Musk hates, but here’s a paragraph from the “2016 presidential campaign” section of the Donald Trump article on Wikipedia.

> Trump's FEC-required reports listed assets above $1.4 billion and outstanding debts of at least $265 million.[140][141] He did not release his tax returns, contrary to the practice of every major candidate since 1976 and to promises he made in 2014 and 2015 to release them if he ran for office.[142][143]

I could not find any mention of tax returns on the Donald Trump page of Grokipedia.

Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump

Grokipedia:

https://grokipedia.com/page/Donald_Trump


Does anybody have a link to the actual survey?

Also, why are social media accounts for pets still allowed?


https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/queensland/teens-stil...

> Also, why are social media accounts for pets still allowed?

Did someone tell you that I'm a dog? I will not confirm or deny.


That’s all legacy but none of it is speedrunning.

If we could conjure pickaxes and electric power plants in a single day, that would be speedrunning.


In your jurisdiction, are there regulations and taxes on the sale of cigarettes and alcohol?

And are there any comparable regulations on social media?


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