Stop trusting VPS providers! Run your own servers at home!
Unless you infiltrate someone else's network, the endpoint your basic VPN connects to can always be traced back to you.
So, either you trust a VPN company doesn't hold logs and try to hide within all the other traffic.
Or you host your own VPN on a VPS knowing you haven't set up any logging (and hope that your VPS hasn't been tampered with), but then have a static IP that comes back to your identity.
Open source, libraries, frameworks and language development is how this is tackled.
Making software is implementing business logic. It's the specific nature of whatever problem you are solving which means you can't use some existing off-the-shelf product.
There are dozens (if not hundreds) of no-code/low-code app builders out there. Things like n8n or ndoe-red.
They get very difficult to maintain at scale.
Years ago, I played with AWS then contacted their support to make sure any AWS billing to my account was disabled.
I thought I'd try it again recently, and couldn't log in.
I still don't think I'm missing anything.
I'd rather have VPS or server providers where I know exactly what I'm getting per month no matter what, tho I've ran near data transfer surcharges.
Oh, it's expected costs.
Like, figure out the compute requirements of your code, multiply by the cost per compute unit (or whatever): boom, your cost.
Totally predictable.
Compared to suddenly having to replace a $20k server that dies in your data center.
So much easier.
Except when your code (let's be honest, the most likely thing to have an error in it... At least compared to some 4+ year old production hardware that everyone runs) has a bug in it that requires 20x compute.
But maybe that is a popularity spike (the hug-of-death)! That's why you migrated to the #cloud anyway, right? To handle these spikes! And you've always paid your bills so... Yeh, here's a 20x bill.
The amount of software that is limited free self-hosted but the next tier of "self hosted" is enterprise and thousands per year is ridiculous.
Absolutely ridiculous.
Like, you have self hosted. I like your software, I use it personally and that's why I'm using it for (and recommending it to) small businesses. They could afford your 10-100 per month for whatever extra features, but they don't want to rely on 3rd party hosting. They want to host it themselves.
But the only way to get those features is to go for some "cloud" bullshit they don't control, or to pay "enterprise" prices.
It's why I make part of what I make/charge a contribution to the products and projects I use and recommend.
I'll set all that up and tailor it to your company, but anything and everything I recommend/implement is standing on the shoulders of giants. So pay those giants.
Although I think I'm lucky with the people I work for, in that that are interested in the tech, but not the detail.
If you think curiosity without rigor is bad, you should see rigor without curiosity
I hope I typed that right. I couldn't copy the alt text from the source on mobile.
And I was annoyed that XKCD alt text wasn't included with the post, so I thought I would include it to the best of my ability
Yup.
But in open source it CAN be noticed, by anyone determined enough to dig into its side effects.
Proprietary software? You file a regression bug that startup takes 500ms longer, and it might get looked at.
Also, backdoors that are discovered in open source software improve automated software auditing.
“The United States has unilaterally and repeatedly provoked new economic and trade frictions, exacerbating uncertainty and instability in bilateral economic and trade relations,” the statement said. “Instead of reflecting on its own actions, the United States has groundlessly accused China of violating the consensus, a claim that grossly distorts the facts.”
That is such a wonderfully diplomatic way of saying "stop being a fucking idiot, your words have meaning and these are the consequences. Grow up".
Even just "grow up", tbh.
As much as I dislike the amount of reliance the world has on China (for the labour conditions there, the nature of their government to impose dodgy practices, generally speaking not being a "good egg"), China seems like the only trading bloc (although not a bloc, I guess... Maybe "trading entity") that can unilaterally stand toe-to-toe with TACO and win. So, good on china.
let data = null
do {
const response = await openai.prompt(prompt)
if (response.error !== null) continue;
try {
data = JSON.parse(response.text)
} catch {
data = null // just in case
}
} while (data === null)
return data
Yup.
It's a traumatic job/task that gets farmed to the cheapest supplier which is extremely unlikely to have suitable safe guards and care for their employees.
If I were implementing this, I would use a safer/stricter model with a human backed appeal system.
I would then use some metrics to generate an account reputation (verified ID, interaction with friends network, previous posts/moderation/appeals), and use that to either: auto-approve AI actions with no appeals (low rep); auto-approve AI actions with human appeal (moderate rep); AI actions must be approved by humans (high rep).
This way, high reputation accounts can still discuss & raise awareness of potentially moderatable topics as quickly as they happen (think breaking news kinda thing). Moderate reputation accounts can argue their case (in case of false positives). Low reputation accounts don't traumatize the moderators.
Merging early when at speed makes sense, because you still have a lot of lane left before you have to merge - less pressure, more time, less likely to make a bad decision.
Merging late during slow traffic makes sense, as it allows you to align with gaps in the traffic and for the traffic to make space for you without having to actually stop.
The whole "well, it's already broken: what's the worst I can do?" is such a liberating position to be in.