I’ve never had an account with these. Do I need to create an account with them to freeze my credits? And what kinds of information should I give / not give when I do?

thanks for clarifying! that’s really helpful!

haha nice. I’ll try that next time

gotcha, thanks for clarifying :)

“NOPE” as in “not a dark pattern” or as in “I’m not touching this site”? if former, can you clarify on the reason?

can you clarify on the 7?

thanks for confirming my suspicion. as for your question, conda in general is good for installing non-python binaries when needed, and managing env. I don’t use anaconda but it provides a good enough interface for beginners and folks without much coding experience. It’s usually the easiest to use that than other variants for them, or the python route of setting up environments

If you’ve never worked before, this can be considered practice runs for the when you do.

Like one of the other commentors said, assume everything is accessible by Google and/or your university (and later, your boss, company, organization, …).

And not just you, but the people who interact with you through it. So that means you may be able to put up defenses, but if they don’t (and they most likely do not), the data that you interact with them would likely be accessible as well.

So here are some potential suggestions to minimize private-data access by Google/university while still being able to work with others (adjust things depending on your threat model of course):

• use Google Workspace services only for collaboration and for official business communication
• don’t link things that may be personal, such as Google Map, Youtube, Search history, Browser, …
• if more sensitive things need to be shared with other people, use more private/encrypted solutions that you like or the university suggests. You should use the latter if it’s still “business”-related, e.g. communicate about medical research data with PII
• if there are communications that need sensitive information (eg HR documents, tax documents), ask them (a) if you can bring the sensitive documents to them, (b) or if the university has an encrypted solution, or © if you can use your own encrypted solution (eg put files on protondrive and you give them the appropriate folder password in person)
• go through all Google privacy and security settings every 6 months or so, and turn off what you don’t need (there are usually a bunch of guides for that). Note: every 6 months because there may be new stuff that they add
• turn off all the AI integrated features (sometimes called smart features) in Google services like Mail, GDoc, …
• avoid using GDrive for storage of personal files - if you need to, try to encrypt them before uploading
• you may find there are other people like you; and if you work with them, try to ask whether they are comfortable with alternatives or if they have anything suggestions. However, this is usually rare in most fields, so keep your expectations low for this
• use the multi-account containers in Firefox to containerize all stuff related to university account in one container. Don’t use Google Chrome; if you must you Chromium, there are other “forks?” that you can try
• use UBlock Origin and block unnecessary Google services (you’ll have to play around with this a lot)
• avoid clicking on links in emails if possible, but instead copy them by selecting them (or the right click, copy). This is an unfounded suspicion, Google may track what links you click on

I find it quite common (and confusing) for certain news types like policy, eg “party A reverses the disapproval to oppose the once-unacceptable ban”

I’m also curious. A quick search came up with these. Not sure which one is most reliable/updated

• https://www.comparitech.com/blog/information-security/global-ransomware-attacks/
• https://www.comparitech.com/ransomware-attack-map/
• https://cissm.liquifiedapps.com/
• https://cybermap.kaspersky.com/special/ransomware

Many things are called “AI models” nowadays (unfortunately due to the hype). I wouldn’t dismiss the tools and methodology yet.

That said, the article (or the researchers) did a disservice to the analysis by not including a link to the report (and code) that outlines the methodology and how the distribution of similarities look. I couldn’t find a link in the article and a quick search didn’t turn up anything.

you should try to ask the same question using xAI / Grok if possible. May also ask ChatGPT about Altman as well

I believe experiments like these should move slower and with more scrutiny. As in more animal testing before moving on to humans, esp. due to the controversies surrounding Neuralink’s last animal experiments.

re: your last point, AFAIK, the TLDR bot is also not AI or LLM; it uses more classical NLP methods for summarization.

Is there a database tracking companies that start out with good intentions and then eventually gets bought out or sells out their initial values? I’m wondering what the deciding factors are, and how long it takes for them to turn.

Reminds me of this article https://www.alexmurrell.co.uk/articles/the-age-of-average where the author pulls in different examples of designs and aesthetics converging to some “average”.

I’m feeling conflicted with these trends, on one hand it seems like things are becoming more accessible, while on another, feels like a loss.

This especially may be relevant with generative AI - at least for the very few generative arts I look at, at some point they start to feel the same, impersonal.

They don’t seem to allow account deletions. Does it mean that this could include accounts that they still keep but people don’t use their services anymore?

suggests either these people are so detached from reality, or they are appealing this to very specific sets of people under the guise of a general appeal

the whole premise of OP is that this monitors people, and many organizations use TOTP, which one could also use without internet connections or phones AFAIK.

I’m in academia and I wish this is implemented more. Data breaches are getting quite common, and Github is so entwined in software engineering that it is critical to increase security measures.

or maybe most of them in a folder? and one file that defines their locations for environment variables