I hope this is successful. Fake books are flooding online stores and if this was widely adopted I would certainly refuse to buy anything without it.
But unfortunately I think that's unlikely. Most authors will likely never hear about this. I assume there will be some kind of fee to participate, but this will discourage people from using it. And even if it takes off, the fake book authors will just slap it on anyway as I'm not sure what enforcement mechanism would be effective.
No AI period. As soon as you feed your writing into the slop machine it starts telling you how to make it more like slop (I know someone who's cowriting a book with ChatGPT - this is exactly the result.)
I'd rather read things with typos and bad grammar than read something copyedited by AI.
If the machine can predict your writing, then so can the reader. Which means the reader is getting bored.
Take the Google Docs suggestion as a sign that you shouldn't be writing that sentence at all. Back off, and find a way to tell the story in a way that every sentence provides something new, exciting, and unpredictable.
If the suggestion is better than what you were going to write, take it as a sign that you're not ready to publish. Treat it as a lesson in how to write better, then start over when you're more skilled at the craft.
Much the same applies to all LLM writing. If it can write it, it probably shouldn't be written at all. If an LLM is writing your boilerplate code, it means that there's too much boilerplate in your system. Solve that not by letting somebody else write it, but by rebuilding the system so that it doesn't require boilerplate.
My errors are mostly missing s in verbs, like "The dog eat[s] a lot of meat." , also wrong prepositions like "I'm still thinking [in->about] the exam." and sometimes idioms. I like it [the free version?] as an advanced orthography/grammar corrector for details, not a whole rewrite.
I agree with you. I remember a recent discussion where someone "cleaned" the comment of other user using AI, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47201796 the cleaned version was soulless or as the comment says wooden.
EDIT: From a recent comment by myself:
> People here is friendlier when the author is in the comment section replaying questions.
This time I notice the error on my own, but I made similar silly mistakes in the past. Google Docs may show a line with a suggestion to fix it.
Yes, stored value cards are a very mature technology.
For various reasons, they're mostly used in closed-loop systems these days (think laundromats, transit systems etc.), but historically there were open-loop deployments in many European countries, and in some countries, stored-value POS payments are still very popular, e.g. in Japan.
It's a real shame that the entire world moved to online-only. Sure, it's much easier and there's less opportunity for various kinds of fraud as a result, but in terms of availability during outages or cyber attacks, it was a big unforced step backwards.
> historically there were open-loop deployments in many European countries
Indeed, there used to be things like "Moneo". The problem is that banks never trusted really these systems, so you were limited to, say, 50E of stored value. Also for some reason in Europe the readers of such cards have never been great, I guess because most devices were built on the cheap, so even if the transaction is offline and supposedly fast, you would have to wiggle your cards all around most readers for 2s until it's picked up.
In Hong Kong there is the Octopus card, which started as a closed loop subway card, but ended up being so loved that now you can pay litterally anything with it. It can store up to $500, and you can set it up to automatically top-up to $500 more per day linked to your bank account. Also accepting payments from octopus cards is very easy, you don't need a physical device and small businesses can just have the customer card tapped on their phone with a merchant app.
These were storage only though, right? Such systems are trivial to compromise.
Stored-value payment cards usually contain at least a secret key and some logic that allows them to establish a secure channel to another trusted entity, such as a merchant smartcard (which can be embedded in a terminal) or a backend server (and a corresponding HSM).
Not in the Netherlands, no. The card can be a bank card, and you can be billed at the end of the month automatically through direct debit.
It also wouldn't work as you describe, as the terminal at the point of entry doesn't know how much to charge you since it doesn't know where your journey ends.
Some transit systems work by putting a hold on your card for a nominal amount. When you finish your journey it then only claims the cost of your journey
Holds don't really show up in the monthly statement. At least not in the cards I've had. It's a functionality for merchants to say "I'd like to charge this customer up to $500, would she be good for it?". If the CC company says yes, then the merchant knows they can do so. E.g. car rental companies do this for potential damages. Up to a week the merchant can charge the actual amount (usually less) or just release the hold.
Holds are a credit card feature, GVB is a Dutch transit authority, so they're more likely to be talking about bank cards, ie. debit cards, which I don't think support holds in that same sense.
It will bill your 4 EUR (on a tram/bus) or the whole 20 (or something on a train) instead of the actual journey price if you forget to checkout. Pretty sure it can decline cards for insufficient balance too. Not sure the entry gate blocks the amount.
Actual chipcards don't bill you at the end of the month either -- they reload a fixed amount through direct debit (which takes a few days) the moment your balance crosses zero. If the direct debit isn't setup for a card (because it's not a personalized card) or the debit was rejected, the card is blocked.
For business chipcards cards it works somewhat the way you described.
It definitely exists in Amsterdam, no? When I visit I just tap my card/phone on NFC enabled card checking machines (which exist in and out of the stations)
Hey, that's easy, it's をこかすや. You could probably make some funny "CAPTCHAs" for otaku/weeb stuff in this vein. Though, I'm not sure there's much you could do that would not be easily solved by Gemini or whatever frontier models, but it would be entertaining anyway.
You can use KeePassXC for passkeys. It will generate completely unidentifiable public keys, and save the the private keys to a portable KDBX file.
It's unfortunate that passkeys have been such a disaster. Attestation should never have been part of the spec, it should never have been presented as a replacement for hardware U2F keys, and a private key file format should have been defined on day 1. But there is useful functionality buried under all the noise and confusion.
But unfortunately I think that's unlikely. Most authors will likely never hear about this. I assume there will be some kind of fee to participate, but this will discourage people from using it. And even if it takes off, the fake book authors will just slap it on anyway as I'm not sure what enforcement mechanism would be effective.
reply