asnelt

> It introduces statistical regularities, but all RNGs introduce statistical regularities.

Agreed.

> So the question is on average are these statistical regularities better or worse than those introduced by the alternative,

Indeed. This is an empirical question. That is what the article is about, for a specific setting.

> ... and the answer is no, if implemented properly.

I don't agree with that. This is not about implementation. It's about how the statistical regularities that are imposed on the full output distribution affect that distribution. There is a change - by construction. That change can be good in some situations and bad in others. The authors claim that it is mostly bad in the setting that they investigated. This looks like a fair statement.

The conditional distribution is the same. The joint distribution of the full output does change with watermarking. Just look at the diagram in the article: there is a loop back to the seed once a token has been generated.

Changing the distribution is the whole point: it introduces statistical regularities that can be detected.

Me too. It seems to be the only one that does not litter the sdcard directory.

That's the premise of Tau Zero, a very good novel:

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

I hear you. This is exactly the reason why I have a digital signage display rather than a Smart TV.

> Can we take this as an official statement that Nvidia supports local models?

The first reply on the X thread is by Gerardo Delgado, who is "Sr. Director of Product - Local AI, Creators, Developers @NVIDIA" according to his profile. In his post, he says "My team's goal at NVIDIA is to grow Local AI."

I couldn't immediately find whether GrapheneOS grants READ_PRIVILEGED_PHONE_STATE to Google Play. It might very well be that the GrapheneOS sandbox spoofs a fake IMEI, and I do hope so.

In any case, my parent comment was meant for stock Pixels, as mentioned by armadyl further up in this thread.

Even with a burner sim, there is the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number, which is tied to the phone, and is known to all apps with the android.permission.READ_PRIVILEGED_PHONE_STATE permission.

The outcome of this vote is not set in stone. If the situation changes, there can be another general-resolution vote to adapt to the new situation. I think the result of this vote is appropriate for the current degree of automation when used responsibly.

Exactly. Just tweaking the order of suggested models for a search query could already have a huge impact on model popularity.

> AOSP has a massive amount of non-Google companies and individuals working on operating systems based on it.

based on is the important part here. Yes, AOSP would survive without Google. But as long as Google is in control of AOSP, it controls the direction in which AOSP and all downstream projects are headed. Because of breaking changes in AOSP, there is a cost in maintaining downstream changes. So downstream projects cannot veer off too far, short of a hard fork.

> You're misinformed about security preview patches. It has nothing to do with Google being hostile.

Does it not? From the 2025092500 GrapheneOS release notes: "We strongly disagree with broadly distributing patches to OEMs 3-4 months before the official publication date. It further delays getting patches to users and sophisticated attackers will have no issue getting the patches from one of many people at Android OEMs with early access."

Sounds pretty hostile to me.

That's an interesting video. If the skyscrapers were flickering just a little faster, the sky would be the color of a television tuned to a dead channel.

True, security seems to be the main reason. But while desktop linux is community driven, AOSP is controlled by Google. So long-term, GrapheneOS is at the mercy of Google, no matter what. And also in terms of security, Google is becoming more hostile, where since a while, the GrapheneOS team is not allowed to publish all security patches source code in a timely manner: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/26476-backports-quarterly-r...

> If it bears the mark, it is likely generated (or someone deliberately made it look generated).

One could even say, the mark is load-bearing.

Given the context, I had to read this twice to understand that PR is not referring to Pull Request here.

Yes, I do mean the glowglobe. As they are floating right above the person, they should also protect from rain. And there was a scene where one was floating through the rain.

Reminds me of the floating umbrella that appeared on Caladan in the 1984 Dune movie.

Can you elaborate on your setup? What harness are you using with Gemma 4 on your 32GB machine?

I live in a small apartment and do 20m using an attic antenna. Of course, I can't compete with big outdoor antennas. But from Scotland, SSB to mainland Europe and FT8 to the US or the Caribbean is not a problem.

Even if you don't have access to an attic, there are antenna constructions that can work for apartments. Have a look at "ARRL's Small Antennas for Small Spaces" and RSGB's "Stealth Antennas" as starting points.

Alternatively, you could consider a portable solution where you carry a small HF rig and some wire in a backpack. The Yaesu FT-857D is very popular for this as it's small, all bands, all modes and does 100W. If you search for "Yaesu FT-857D backpack" you will find many suggestions. It's not in production anymore but you might find it second hand. For Yaesu, other options include the FT-891 (no VHF/UHF) and the more bulky FT-991A. Icom has the IC-7100, which is also a little more bulky than the FT-857D.

I agree that it's a bad idea to use non-cryptographic PRNGs as defaults. I think most people are not aware of how easy it is to break them. For fun, I wrote an Android app to break LCGs and Mersenne Twisters: https://github.com/asnelt/derandom

I suppose I could be ridiculed too, but there is also my `rrep` utility which still has an `-r` option: https://git.sr.ht/~asnelt/rrep

It's packaged for Debian, Arch and openSUSE: https://repology.org/project/rrep/packages

I moved from fastmail to Runbox many years ago. The Runbox service is very reliable and all the servers are outside of the US.

Regarding support on Android, if you are using a custom rom like LineageOS without Google Play Services then it won't work currently. Unfortunately, Google implemented FIDO2 in the play services, not in AOSP: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=997538