Windex007

You're getting downvoted, but you're right. This knife cuts both ways, and it far predates llms.

Any non trivial algorithm intended to rank is gameable.

This is the foundation of SEO. It's how the Donald invaded reddit. It's the fucking central pillar of modern propaganda dissemination.

They're going to spend a ton of money to lock themselves into an ongoing arms race.

And if one is morality opposed to this type of pricing practice, I think one becomes morality obligated to do exactly what you described.

And honestly, I think you don't even have to come out ahead for it to be worth it. If your LLM assessed price would be 1000, spending a full $200 on compute to game and $800 ticket is a wash. You SHOULD spend $300 to get an $800 ticket if that's where the floor is. Because fuck em.

The crux of those scenarios you outlined doesn't hinge on weather or not data is property. Their arguments are that it isn't YOUR property.

This is so cute! I think I could easily convince my wife to do something like this!

Also... it's pretty easy to see in the comments which people were victims of performative parenting. I don't think they mean to be buzzkills, but behind hysteria there is history. You don't have to accept thier judgements on this picture... but step back for one second and recognize you're roasting someone who appears to be having a PTSD response.

This is where I'm really fuzzy on the mechanics.

Any authentication is to establish an identity. At what point does that involve getting a unique id associated with an OS installation instance?

My original question is how the hardware id and ngrok get associated at all.

So, after getting frustrated and just going to sign up for an account myself, it looks like ngrok has options to sign is as a Google account, or sign in as a github account.

I'm guessing they picked github, and that's why Microsoft had any visibility at all on the fact that they accessed a site that isn't owned by Microsoft.

It still doesn't answer the question of how the browser knows this id which is set at the os level. It still begs the question of what github authentication looks like differently between operating systems. Obviously a osx or Linux machine wouldn't have that id at all. Is it part of the initial authentication request? Is there some kind of challenge and response?

This seems the most likely... but still I want clarity on the mechanism. An identifying token defined in the registry is being sent over the wire. That mechanic is pretty substantial, and I'm surprised a bigger fuss hasn't been made about that. This is pretty far beyond conventional header fingerprinting.

From the article:

Microsoft’s records showed that at that exact same minute, a Windows device carrying GDID g:6755467234350028 had visited the ngrok signup page.

Why does Microsoft have a record that includes both the GDID and a web addresses? I am confused by this mechanism.

Yeah, I conceded that your call to action was correct.

Just wanted to add colour so people understand the mechanics at play. When you understand them, it lets people evaluate other things, without needing you to tell them what to do.

For example, if your comprehension of these companies is that the companies are acting with the goal of profitability l, they would see something like a fast-track onto an index post IPO as a bid for legitimacy, some kind of ego play.

If you comprehend it as a beast that can only subsist on funding with no viable product, it entirely changes how you comprehend the post IPO index listing desire.

Counterpoint:

They already are losing money. They themselves do not project that they will be profitable until 2030. The idea that "smart people with spreadsheets won't let them lose money" is obviously wrong because they have done nothing except lose money, ever.

They get thier operating capital from funding, not sales.

Now, I agree that the gambit is wrong. So you're right. You're just right for the wrong reason.

Funding is just the cash value of market optimism for the future of your product. High usage props up optimism. Social media IPOs were valued very much based on active users, the idea being that more users meant more opportunity for profit.

The more people actively using these tools, even if they're just maliciously burning tokens, just add to the "active users" metric. Which makes funding easier. And funding is the ACTUAL way these companies "make thier money".

Another payment option is not tackling it at all and just "paying the interest" by having a larger engineering team to wrangle the beast than you would otherwise have needed.

They're asking us to scale back our usage.

I give it another year. The markets are souring on it, big time. Unless something big and good happens w/ spaceX (because retail investors are underwater on that) the next set of AI IPOs are going to be a disaster.

Ask yourself why all these companies are scrambling to IPO now. Thier investors see the writing on the wall: it isn't going to happen. The breakthrough. The singularity. An army of virtual workers with the ability to actually do the job. The only thing left for investors to do is push the IPOs to get any kind of return.

They think we're at a peak of perceived value, and a higher plateau isn't anywhere in the foreseeable future. Judging by how quickly ALL these private companies are suddenly interested in IPOs, I actually think they think they've passed the peak already and are sliding.

You gotta understand, the C-Suite, even the CTO, need to collectively "paint a picture" for investors. And that is art, and art is subjective. If investors wanna hear "we are prepared to leverage a new technology so that we can remain competitive", then you gotta paint that picture. The buy in, the double down... take it for what it's worth.

Did you think your C-Suite has ever actually been honest with you about plans, priorities, the value proposition of your work... anything really? Don't ever confuse what they "say" with what the actually think or believe.

You SHOULD quit, I WISH I was in a position to do so. I'd spin by we could crack a cold one. Hella jealous.

Just like... for your soul... don't think this is the new normal. Some neat and good and useful stuff is going to come out of this... but the impact that this tech will have on the workforce is being wildly overestimated.

I don't want to make any assumptions about your age, but I think a lot of people in north america have forgotten or weren't alive to experience the smoking world.

You used to just get handed an ashtray at a restaurant. You would just smoke at your desk at the office. Basically there were ashtrays and lighters within arms reach at any moment. Industrial design was to cater to the reality that everyone was smoking pretty much all the time.

If you went back in time and told someone from 1950 that you couldn't smoke inside, what the cost adjusted price of cigarettes were, that cars don't have ashtrays or lighters... I think they would genuinely think we had lost the cold war.

So, yes, they're still making money. But they went from an active participant in the engineering of society to merely an industry selling a product. I think there are very compelling parallels.