It's "implied" throughout the whole post (or more like assumed that the reader understands this, because it's the basic premise of the problem). It's why they link to a post that explains the basic concept after a remark that "This describes our issue in more detail".
> tl;dr Google spent over a decade telling developers that Google API keys (like those used in Maps, Firebase, etc.) are not secrets. But that's no longer true: Gemini accepts the same keys to access your private data. We scanned millions of websites and found nearly 3,000 Google API keys, originally deployed for public services like Google Maps, that now also authenticate to Gemini even though they were never intended for it. With a valid key, an attacker can access uploaded files, cached data, and charge LLM-usage to your account. Even Google themselves had old public API keys, which they thought were non-sensitive, that we could use to access Google’s internal Gemini.
From Google themselves, in the Firebase docs:
> API keys for Firebase services are not secret. Firebase uses API keys only to identify your app's Firebase project to Firebase services, and not to control access to database or Cloud Storage data, which is done using Firebase Security Rules. For this reason, you do not need to treat API keys for Firebase services as secrets, and you can safely embed them in client code.
... or at least that's what it used to say, until they quietly updated the docs to say this:
> API keys for Firebase services are not secret. API keys for Firebase services only identify your Firebase project and app to those services. Authorization is handled through Google Cloud IAM permissions, Firebase Security Rules, and Firebase App Check.
> All Firebase-provisioned API keys are automatically restricted to Firebase-related APIs. If your app's setup follows the guidelines in this page, then API keys restricted to Firebase services do not need to be treated as secrets, and it's safe to include them in your code or configuration files.
Followed later by (in different section):
> Use your Firebase-provisioned API keys only for Firebase-related APIs. If your app uses any other APIs (for example, the Places API for Maps or the Gemini Developer API), use a separate API key and restrict it to the applicable API.
Yeah, the amount of people creating, running and maintaining websites yet don't understand how websites actually work in practice is very high and seems we haven't even come close to the ceiling yet.
The question isn't "can you mitigate the problems to some extent?", it's "can you see a path to making satellite data centers more appealing than terrestrial?"
The answer is a flat out "no," and none of your statements contradict this.
Terrestrial will always be better:
1. Reducing the cost of launches is great, but it will never be as cheap as zero launches.
2. Radio transmissions have equally high bandwidth from Earth, but fiber is a better network backbone in almost every way.
3. Radiation events don't only cause unpredictable data errors, they can also cause circuit latch-ups and cascade into system failure. Error-free operation is still better in any case. Earth's magenetosphere and atmosphere give you radiation shielding for free, rad-hard chips will always cost more than standard (do they even exist for this application?), and extra shielding will always cost more than no shielding.
4. On Earth you can use conduction, convection, AND radiation for cooling. Space only gets you marginally more effective radiation.
5. Solar is cheaper on the ground than in space. The increase in solar collection capability per unit area in space doesn't offset the cost of launch: you can get 20kW of terrestrial solar collection for around the price of a single 1U satellite launch, and that solar production can be used on upgraded equipment in the future. Any solar you put on a satellite gets decommissioned when the inference hardware is obsolete.
And this ignores other issues like hardware upgrades, troubleshooting, repairs, and recycling that are essentially impossible in space, but are trivial on the ground.
The fact that Brightline can take you from Miami to Orlando is wonderful, and I'm really happy Florida is embracing more efficient, less dangerous, and less stressful forms of transportation.
But using it to make a subtle jab agains CAHSR isn't really fair -- they're two very different projects (for one of them, it's genuinely a stretch to call it "HSR") in two very different regions.
Yes, it's harder to get big projects through the red tape in California than it is in West / Panhandle Texas or Central Florida. Go take a drive through those regions and you'll quickly see some reasons why, besides just NIMBYism, Californians are a bit more protective of their landscapes. If a massive wind project were proposed across large swaths of the Texas Hillcountry, you'd see a lot more push-back.
> But using it to make a subtle jab agains CAHSR isn't really fair -- they're two very different projects (for one of them, it's genuinely a stretch to call it "HSR") in two very different regions.
Well, CA HSR doesn't exist. It's missing the R part of the HSR. So that must be the one it's a stretch to call "HSR".
Brightline is too slow to call it high speed. But we have it today which is worth something unlike maybe some year with all the other options - so brightline gets the win today. things are likely to change in the future but I don't see anything I'd bet on (but I only bet very sure things)
> or one of them, it's genuinely a stretch to call it "HSR"
How fast is California's HSR?
That's both sarcasm and an actual question. It doesn't go anywhere now but I keep hearing it's speed get downgraded as they encounter the real world. Plus, the goal of LA-SF is practically abandoned and now it takes you from a place you don't want to be to a place you don't want to go.
You really can't compare the two because one exists only as a goal and the other is an accomplishment.
Here's where I'd normally complain about how our economic system requires prices to increase while product quality degrades to ensure ever-increasing profits for shareholders.
Instead, I'll complain about commercials: why can't we just have something that's truly paid and ad-free? Do we actually value our time less than advertisers do?
Because it’s more profitable to have something that is paid for AND has ads.
Same thing happened with cable TV when it first came out, it was advertised as ad free. Then it filled up with ads, and the streaming services came along promising no ads. Now the circle is repeating itself.
> ...critics say that the use of sponsorship could make cable programmers more vulnerable to censorship or control by advertisers, particularly in light of recent efforts by organizations such as the Moral Majority and its offshoot, the Coalition for Better Television.
40+ years later I think it's pretty clear this was an accurate prediction.
> A much-cited - and widely disputed - study by the Benton & Bowles advertising agency found that the public would accept advertising if it meant a reduction or a holding-of-the-line on subscription fees...
This is great until a year later when YoY revenue growth is flat and prices are increased anyway.
The article doesn't once say cable TV never had ads; it only says the public had some perception that would be the case. In fact, it even talks about how cable channels were bringing in millions of dollars in ad revenues despite being very small markets at the time.
In reality, cable TV had ads from day one, decades before this article was published. Originally every cable TV station had ads, because they were just retransmissions of broadcast stations which ran ads. The first nation-wide cable TV station had ads, and many of the early cable-only channels (CNN, USA, others) had ads.
The problem is that the most lucrative advertising market is to advertise to those people who are willing to pay extra to not see ads. The people who are willing to save money by seeing ads, are also the people who don't have excess discretionary cash that they'd be willing to spend on the products advertisers are advertising to them. This is the paradox that keeps driving this industry around in circles, swallowing its own tail.
There was an interesting interview with a long timer with google on a podcast I listen to (freakanomics?) where the concept of ads came up. Apparently very early on google did the analysis and found that google search provided something like $50 (can't remember the exact number) of actualizable annual value to a typical user. Which is to say they could charge around $5 monthly and it'd still be worth it for most people to pay. But the ads. They could make way more than $50 per user just during the christmas season alone. And so it was a no brainer for them to go with ads (despite anti ad sentiment being a key part of the papers that led to the creation of google...).
So, to answer your question. I think we do value our time less than advertisers do. Worse, is I suspect your eyeballs becomes more valuable to advertisers the more your willing to pay to not see ads...
I'm sure this has been going on for a while but I'm noticing an even bigger obsession with companies manifesting ad inventory locations everywhere possible. Biggest standout recently is Lyft placing large ads in their app while I'm waiting on a ride that I'm paying them for! I too used to think something that was paid for directly with actual money meant no ads but not anymore.
I think this was just a short reprieve from ads in some spaces as we were adopting new tech, not a norm that is just recently being broken. Cable TV, newspapers, magazines, and even many taxis and municipal buses have had advertisements for decades.
One of my favorite examples is LCD screens on gas pumps - yelling at you about various deals in the store, as you're standing there _giving them money for the fuel you're pumping_. Some at least have a mute button...
I will go to a gas station with those loud screens exactly once. After that, I have written them off. There is a station in my in-law's town with those. I had to fill up there once about 10 years ago as my fuel light was on. I'm 95% sure they got rid of the screens a while back but I will never go to that station again if I have a choice.
I've accidentally hit those sorts of gas stations a couple of times. I didn't even bother getting gas at them, though. I got back in my car and drove away. I'm not willing to pay a company to abuse me. There are other stations that actually value their customers, and I'll go to them.
This same attitude is also why I stopped doing any business with Amazon years ago. They became intolerable.
If I go to those I'll lean with my hand over the speaker if they don't have a mute button. I'm not listening to whatever garbage they put together there. I wish I could do more but I need gas... I hate this world sometimes.
Monopoly is the best position to implement anti-competitive behavior. Copyright is monopoly. It should be no surprise that Copyright has resulted in anti-competitive behavior.
No one can afford to compete with large media corporations, because Copyright explicitly turns media corporations into monopolies.
Copyright is literally a monopoly over the redistribution of a "work". That's what the word means. Without the concept of monopoly, Copyright is meaningless.
If your assertion is that the concept of monopoly somehow keeps itself exclusive to that specific context, then I sincerely disagree. The system is what the system is made of.
> If your assertion is that the concept of monopoly somehow keeps itself exclusive to that specific context, then I sincerely disagree
That's fine, but you're using a strange definition. Monopoly is something that's bad. I own my house, which could be called a monopoly. I am my kids' dad - another monopoly, in the world of strange definitions. It's not useful to use words with specific meanings, particularly negative meanings, and repurpose them for everyday, non-negative situations. It's the opposite of useful. And that's why I hope you retain your monopoly on this silly definition.
On the contrary! I'm choosing my words carefully, based on their meaning.
Property and monopoly are similar, but not the same. Monopoly applies to a set of items, not a single item or group of items.
For example, you can "own" a copy of Pulp Fiction. You can watch it, you can break it, and you can sell it. What you are not allowed to do is sell a copy of the one you own. You are not allowed to do so, because Miramax LLC was granted a monopoly over the set of all Pulp Fiction copies.
You can own your house, but that is not the same as monopolizing the entire market of houses.
You don't copyright a book, you copyright what's written in it. Copyright for a novel doesn't decide who owns each printed book, it creates a monopoly over the entire market of books containing that novel. If you own the copyright to a novel, no one but you is allowed to compete in the market of books containing your novel.
Sure, they can compete in the larger overall market of all books in general, but they must avoid the segment of that market that you own a copyright to.
Absolutely, advertisers are big companies who don't really care how much they're spending on ads. Especially big brands, they have no idea how much advertising helps them, and they don't care about the budget that much. They'll absolutely pay more to put an ad in front of you than you think it's worth to remove it. That's the whole thing with ads.
> why can't we just have something that's truly paid and ad-free?
We can. You just have to make it first.
This is not a question to ask of others, it a just question you ask yourself. Once you answer it for yourself, then just realize that same answer applies to everyone from their perspective.
But how? I don't have the resources to build something like this on my own. I'm skeptical I could convince many investors to give me money to build something pitched as "just like Prime Video but without the ad revenue" when Amazon has certainly already done market research and determined this is the best path to maximize profit.
> Instead, I'll complain about commercials: why can't we just have something that's truly paid and ad-free? Do we actually value our time less than advertisers do?
Yes, clearly, as revealed by the way most consumers act.
How many people do you know that actually pay for YouTube to get rid of ads? I personally do, and I encourage everyone else to do so, but I assume it's a tiny market.
It is paid and ad free. You just have to pay the new rate.
Perhaps they should have raised the rate of base Prime, and then offered a lower priced paid w/ads option. But there was probably an issue with the annual holders in that case.
So, instead they lowered the features and now folks can up to the new subscription.
Advertisers are sort of benevolent here, if not lesser victims.
Google, Facebook and now Amazon realized the big money is in brokering ads. As brokers, they know everything and control everything, exploiting both the viewers and advertisers.
More specifically, the total revenue of ads + the people willing to pay $3/month is greater than the revenue lost when people cancel their service due to ads
> More specifically, the total revenue of ads + the people willing to pay $3/month is greater than the revenue lost when people cancel their service due to ads
The bundling makes cancellation particularly unlikely: you can't (or at least I don't know how to) cancel the Prime Video part of the Prime package alone, so there's no way to show your dissatisfaction with this short of cancelling the entire Prime membership. Which this latest push, however small on its own, has been enough to get me finally to consider doing, but it's still tough.
I consider myself lucky to have discovered how little value Prime has for shipping a few years ago when Target had a free Shipt promotion. I learned a couple things pretty quickly after I dropped Prime:
1. In most cases my Amazon orders took about the same amount of time to get to my house as they did with Prime: 3-4 days
2. Amazon has some terrible dark patterns. For example, on the product page you always see the lowest priced shipping option (usually free), but at checkout it defaults to paid shipping. It's really easy to accidentally pay an extra $5.99 for shipping, often with the same estimated arrival it would've had with free shipping.
Personally I find the shipping benefits of Prime vastly overrated. I just got a free trial of Prime, and they promised 2 day shipping... but it took 4 days. Why would someone pay for that? I tend to let items accumulate to hit the free shipping minimum and then order. Still tends to come in 2-4 days regardless.
I canceled Prime over this ad thing, and what I noticed was they seem to ship packages as the same speed, but they let the order sit for a few days before fulfilling it. It makes it seem like they find the efficiencies from treating every package the same during packing and shipping worthwhile, so they just hold the order in a queue for a few days before releasing it as a punishment for not being a Prime user.
I could be reading that wrong, but it was sure how it looked with my first few non-Prime orders.
I have a warehouse serving our entire metro area five miles from my house. Shipping takes two days after Amazon sits on my order for 2-3 days.
Their drivers are also the worst. The driver that covers my area tends to throw packages a good 10 feet at my door. Needless to say, Amazon is pretty much my last choice option these days.
I'll just watch even fewer things on Prime, I guess. Everything about the UI and watching experience seems worse than Netflix, but then ... that's been worsening recently as well in ways I can't quantify.
Same here. I had an additional cable channel subscription through Prime, which I've now cancelled, as I don't wish to tolerate any advertising in my video stream, so I will simply stop watching any video on Prime. And as you pointed out, the quality of Prime video offerings has been in decline of late.
Why won't I leave Prime (yet)? Because I have an "Amazon" visa credit card, with an admittedly serious 5% permanent discount on all purchases from Amazon (as well as companies they own, such as Whole Foods.) I won't stop purchasing products through Prime just yet; am simply careful to avoid anything that looks problematic, price-gouged, or needing aftersale support, and the discount lock-in is too attractive to me to ignore for now. But video? I can always find it elsewhere.
Same goes for "FreeVee" because "Free with ads" isn't free.
FYI, if you cancel Prime but want to keep that card, they will downgrade you to a blue Amazon branded card that still gets 3% back at Amazon. I don't know if you still get any discount at Whole Foods since I might only go there about once a year at most.
So if Prime is failing you in other ways, don't feel like you need to keep it to keep your discount.
I'm in the same position. I originally subscribed to Prime for the shipping benefits. We also started using the Prime Photos platform for our photo storage and sharing. Then I got an "Amazon" CC and I really enjoy/use the 5% cash-back program. I even have a FireTV Cube and outfitted several people with FireTV devices.
However, I'm seriously reconsidering my choices. Almost my entire family is in the Apple ecosystem and we recently purchased an Apple TV device to replace a FireTV, and I must say that it is a much better experience. And iCloud is a better photo/video sharing platform for us than Prime Photos ever was. Really, the only thing keeping me subscribed to Prime is the cash-back program.
As for Prime Video, it has always been the most crappy of the video streaming options. It's always frustrating when the things that I want to watch are not included with Prime and require a purchase or rental. And now that there are ads and lower quality, the chance that I'll watch anything on that platform is steadily declining.
I canceled my Prime a while back when AMZN's started quoting 5 day delivery to my location, though on the rare times when I do order something from AMZN it often takes 7 days.
The thing is I live less than 3 hours from a big warehouse (people who live in the same ZIP code as one of those warehouses often get 5-day shipping) but it seems that the residents of Upstate New York and New England are frequently treated as unpeople when it comes to facilities and infrastructure.
Their market research clearly saw me as some kind of anomaly if that’s the case.
If they had simply raised the price of Prime, I would have been mildly annoyed for 30 minutes and moved on with my life, as I had done many times before. Instead, on top of my yearly Prime membership, I was going to get charge a monthly fee… this just hit all the wrong notes for me. It felt so cheap. Here I am paying for a premium service and they are going to nickel and dime me with a monthly charge on top of the yearly one. Not a chance in hell. I cancelled my Prime membership after 15 years over this move and have no regrets.
I hope I’m not alone in that. Prime Video is my least watched steaming service and waiting a few extra days for free shipping hasn’t been a big deal.
When cancelling there was no point where they asked why, which I found interesting.
I am a person who will pay to avoid ads. I have YouTube Premium and pay for the ad free Hulu tier. I also always pay extra to get the Kindle without ads, and pay to remove ads in any app I download within minutes. I even pay for my search engine (Kagi) instead of using Google or DDG. I’m the person they were after, but not like this.
I’m curious how many people they expected to pay for this. A modest price hike for everyone would likely have been more profitable and been mostly ignored by everyone. If they wanted to start breaking down the services to offer cheaper options to people looking for it, they should revamp the whole system. Present the 50 Prime offers and let people pick what they want, or have a few different bundles. Shipping and Videos were basically the only 2 things I used, so everything else was of no value to me.
Yea. This is failure masquerading as improvement as far as I can honestly tell. The idea that someone thought it was a good idea to put out a press release or whatever is a little baffling.
It should read, “FCC once again fails to substantively improve the lives of consumers OR address data breaches and the loss of consumer data by countless companies.”
Its baffling. But it’s still better than the TSA. ;)
I'm of the opposite opinion. I think there's some Dunning-Kruger-like effect at play on a macro scale and it's causing researchers to feel like they're closer than they are because they're in uncharted territory and can't see the complexity of what they're trying to build.
Or maybe I'm just jaded after a couple decades of consistently underbidding engineering and software projects :)
This implies the API calls originated in the client, suggesting the client may have had they API key.
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