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MD5 hash collisions are unlikely to happen at random. The defect was that you can make it happen purposefully, making it useless for security.

Sure, but theoretically you could have a system where a distributed log of user generated content is built via this CAS//MD5 primitive. A malicious actor could craft the data such that entries are dropped.

My understanding of the feature, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that you are not granted write access based on a hash. You already have write access. You can use the hash to avoid overwriting someone else's data that was appended to the file in between you checking the file and writing to it. If you already have write access, the hash is irrelevant. As a bad actor, you can corrupt the data without it.

MD5 should not be used for anything security related. Granting write access based on an MD5 hash would be a huge no-no.


Right, the issue comes when a trusted writer is logging data that is sourced from an untrusted party.

Imagine a transaction log being a blob per-customer with many lines corresponding to price, sku, etc, that additionally have some “memo” field provided by the customer. A trusted distributed worker process is responsible for taking incoming requests by the user, pulling their blob down, appending the line based on the request, and CAS’ing it back in (retrying on failure). With enough effort, a particularly devious user could issue many requests with ‘memo’s engineered to not alter the MD5 of their log. This would cause some lines to be lost. An audit of their account transaction log would be unable to accurately reflect the requests they made to the service, and the failure would be invisible.

This is obviously a bit contrived – I’ll be the first to admit. But if the incentives were to exist for this to be worth someone’s time for some system, I think it would be likely to see it come up eventually.


Do you recall the US occupying the Philippines? Did they get a vote?

How about Puerto Rico today?

The US is still a democratic republic.


Where do you get these ideas?

Yes, Filipinos did vote for a territorial government as laid out in the Philippine Organic Act of 1902.

Yes, Puerto Ricans vote. It's a territory. They have their own devolved government.


At no point did Filipinos have the ability to vote for Senators, Congressmen, or the President. Same for Puerto Ricans. US has other territories too, by the way, with the same restrictions.

You have no problem calling the US a democracy, but when the same rules are applied elsewhere you have a problem?


The people of PR voted against becoming a State.


And if they hadn't, would that make the US less of a democratic republic? Not relevant.

Also, see Guam, US Virgin Islands, etc who didn't vote for anything.


It’s incredibly relevant as there has yet to be an election if people in Palestine want to be a part of Israel.


Look, you really like to talk with confidence, but every time you bring up a a point, you pull a whatabout. Have you even looked into what the people you’re so very concerned with want? That’s the most relevant part of all. It’s not your feelings. It’s what the people you say you care about want. It doesn’t appear they want what you want for them, and you’re big mad about that bro.

Keep carrying that white man’s burden.


I actually don’t think the United States is a functioning democracy for what is worth.


Nothing like moving the goal posts, conflating a whole bunch of different issues, and then projecting statements on to me when you’re called out nonsense.

Hope that works out for you.


Why is your definition of democratic the valid one?

Mine is, a country is only a real democracy if ALL people it rules over have the same set of rights. Israel isn't a democracy and so isn't the DRC, despite the fact that it has democratic in its name.


USA is not a real democracy either in your definition.


Correct.


I like how these people think the checkmate move is assume the person they’re talking to is a blind supporter of the USA for some reason, and have zero response when they realize that rationally applying the same rules to everybody really does mean Israel doesn’t pass the bar for a democracy.


The plug is the thing that matters, not the protocol. It will enable non-Tesla vehicles to use the Tesla network.


No, it all matters. Supporting yet another protocol was not wanted by anyone.

The CCS support was already there so it won out.


That is a lot of text for what is a very simple concept. Being able to say "no".

> Even then, they're held on a leash and abused through visa programs like in the US where they're paid a fraction of the rates their US native counterparts earn

That is not abuse. They can leave anytime. And if you talk to them, they are grateful for the opportunity to work here for "a fraction of the rates their US native counterparts earn" and would resent people like you who would take that away from them.

What is outrageous about the story posted is that they can't leave anytime they want. Their passport is taken from them. That's wrong.


Your math is wrong. That said, economists differentiate between nominal and real growth. GDP reports growth that has already been adjusted for inflation. It represents an actual increase in more goods and services produced.


Not everyone is necessary. You just need a critical number to balance the grid.


So Mercedes' solution is to offer a product that isn't usable? Why bother releasing it?


Tesla's solution offers a product that occasionally tries to kill you and people around you. The only reason it doesn't is because drivers are forced to pay attention and take over at a moment's notice at all times.

Mercedes' solution is a car company taking actual responsibility for their software. If they feel the lawsuits/insurance claims/legal snafus are worth the risk, that means their software is probably pretty damn good in that limited scope. Otherwise they could literally bankrupt the company with lawsuits! That's a lot more confidence inspiring to me than Elon's repeated pie-in-the-sky claims.


It's perfectly usable in its intended scope: it allows you to focus on other things while driving in heavy traffic. When they're confident that they can do so safely, they'll extend it to other situations.

Mercedes explains the purpose in their press release:

> Conditionally automated driving on suitable motorway sections where traffic density is high

> During the conditionally automated journey, DRIVE PILOT allows the driver to take their mind off the traffic and focus on certain secondary activities, be it communicating with colleagues via In-Car Office, surfing the internet or relaxing while watching a film. In DRIVE PILOT mode, applications can be enabled on the vehicle's integrated central display that are otherwise blocked while driving.

https://group-media.mercedes-benz.com/marsMediaSite/en/insta...


How heavy does the traffic need to be, I wonder?

Based on that I'm assuming it's following other vehicles rather than following the road, which does make me wonder what happens when you get a clump of DRIVE PILOT vehicles which are all trying to follow each other.

Edit: It seems like it needs a vehicle ahead and under 60kph and uses a mix of other vehicles and road markings. It seems quite usable (but I still have to wonder how many vehicles you can get to follow each other in a chain): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yiPaKfKLZs


It's the other way around. Tesla is selling an extremely expensive beta test that you can't use at all anywhere in any conditions with any kind of safety expectations.

Mercedes is selling a product that has a small set of well-defined cases where it can actually be used.


When I commuted in the city, there was a traffic jam almost every day, and I'd be stuck 15-20 minutes driving at walking speed. On especially bad days it could be up to 45min.

If I could have read my emails in that time it would have been really nice.


The proper solution to this is trains


everyone knows that public transport is the solution to it but I can't buy a railroad track and a train to take to work so people are going to do what they can do


You can't personally buy a railroad but you can vote for people who will apply your tax dollars towards it instead of oil subsidies and auto bailouts :)


let's not turn this into a chain of saying obvious things that everyone involved already knows about, it's not going to add to the conversation and -hopefully- nor will it give you internet points in this website.


With it's current limitations, the only application for Mercedes' solution I can think of is during heavy traffic on highways. But calling it "not usable" does seem a bit harsh.

Of course if you prefer, move fast and brake... maybe


Traffic on highways is also by far the most frustrating part of driving basically for the same reasons it’s an easy-ish target for automation, so seems like a pretty good place to start.

IMO that’s just good product strategy.


It’s useable in certain situations that have a high probability of safety, and allows them to capture data and grow the program safely over time.


Yes. Focus on education and providing more information, not suppressing the information you don't like.


> Focus on education and providing more information, not suppressing the information you don't like.

A: Education is at best only partly-effective as a response — too many malevolent actors follow Steve Bannon's largely-costless strategy of (his literal words) "flood the zone with shit."

B: Mass purveyors of disinformation are thieves — they steal the time of people who take seriously the need to figure out what's true when, say, voting.

C: It's already established that you don't always get to say whatever TF you feel like without consequence — for example, the Federal Trade Commission goes after people for false advertising, and people have been imprisoned for leaking classified information. (At the zoo with my kids years ago, I saw small monkeys scampering quickly around a set of monkey bars in a giant outdoor cage — they shit and pissed whenever the urge struck them, heedless of where it fell. I get much the same impression from people who get indignant when told that they can't say whatever they want whenever they feel like it.)


> What would be your suggestion to this problem? Just ignore it?

Nobody is ignoring it. Platforms are detecting this and providing more content around it, informing the user. This is annoying to some, but far better than banning or shadow banning the content.

There are plenty of solutions. The good ones revolve around providing MORE information, not suppressing the information you don't like.


Do any of these "counter bad information with good information" solutions address people who seek a narrative first and are not moved by more, or more factual, information that offsets their prior belief?

This is what I'm worried about. Shutting down conversation seems like obviously not the right solution, but I'm becoming increasingly skeptical that these ideas can be countered by the truth, as more people tend to highlight what they want as being The Truth, and dissenters as being brainwashed.


I mean at the end of the day you have to leave the burden of responsibility with the consumer and the people disseminating the news. There has always been fake news, and there will always be fake news, better informed readers are how you counter it.


idk, this seems pretty dogmatic to me, and you just repeated my question as a statement. is better informed readers actually always the best solution? are there any conditions that could ever form where this would not be the case?

what if readers do not want more information? or what happens when they dismiss it as brainwashing without consideration? that is happening today all over fb, all over tiktok, all over reddit, and all over here as well.


What if the censors seek a narrative first, are not moved by factual information, dismiss dissenters as being brainwashed?


Then they are bad at their job.

What if the police abuse their power, well then I guess we shouldn't have any.


> What if the police abuse their power

Then people are free to speak out against it. But if they weren't, that question would indeed be unanswerable.


You're implying that the "censors" would censor without limits, including complaints about them.


Yes that seems a reasonable concern. Indeed it's hard to censor something without censoring complaints about censoring that thing, unless these complaints are entirely on free speech grounds. But if we already don't believe in free speech anymore, then we would have to interpret a complaint about censoring something as an endorsement of that thing, and hence censor the complaint as well.


This is all hypothetical though since there aren't censors


So in the end you agree that there shouldn't be any as well?


Your second paragraph is an amusing self reflection on the first.

You're "becoming increasingly" one of the people you criticise.

Which is absolutely fine.

The question then is why would you seek government help to censor your own thoughts.


Free speech is the least bad option. All other options result in violence and persecution.

This isn’t even debatable either historically or in the present day.


The reason why people elect these facts as true is not because of the disinformation. So your approach must be wrong if you propose to remove it.


> disinformation is not a free speech issue.

Yes, it is.

> Saying we shouldn’t fight it is as invalid as saying we shouldn’t repel an invading force because that enemy has a right to bear arms.

You're conflating the rights of citizens vs foreigners. Your own citizens are not your enemy. You should never call them that. That sort of thinking is what gets you internment camps. That is a road which we already traveled and do not need to travel again.

The difference between "you can't say that" and "you will go to jail if you say that" is very minor and plenty of western nations have already breached that wall.


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