Netfuture: The future is networked

Recent technical essays

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  NFTs are unethical2023-07-18
  As an avid reader, you know my arguments that neither NFT nor smart contracts live up to their promises, and that the blockchain underneath is also more fragile and has a worse cost-benefit ratio than most believe. Similarly, I also … Read more
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  Inefficiency is bliss (sometimes)2023-07-15
  Bureaucracy and inefficiency are frowned upon, often rightly so. But they also have their good sides: Properly applied, they ensure reliability and legal certainty. Blockchain disciples want to “improve” bureaucracy-ridden processes, but achieve the opposite. Two examples:
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  How to block AI crawlers with robots.txt [2 Updates]2023-07-09
  If you wanted your web page excluded from being crawled or indexed by search engines and other robots, robots.txt was your tool of choice, with some additional stuff like <meta name=”robots” value=”noindex” /> or <a href=”…” rel=”nofollow”> sprinkled in. It … Read more
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  «Right to be Forgotten» void with AI?2023-03-02
  In a recent discussion, it became apparent that «unlearning» is not something machine learning models can easily do. So what does this mean to laws like the EU «Right to be Forgotten»?
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  Post Quantum and Homomorphic Encryption made easy2023-02-23
  Major challenges in computer and information security are the advent of quantum computers and the need to trust your data to (cloud) service providers. New cryptography is supposed to help, but they look daunting. At their core, however, they are … Read more
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  How does ChatGPT work, actually?2023-01-30
  ChatGPT is arguably the most powerful artificial intelligence language model currently available. We take a behind-the-scenes look at how the “large language model” GPT-3 and ChatGPT, which is based on it, work.
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  Identifying AI art2023-01-24
  AI art is on the rise, both in terms of quality and quantity. It (unfortunately) lies in human nature to market some of that as genuine art. Here are some signs that can help identifying AI art.
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  The FTX crypto exchange and its spider web2022-12-14
  Yesterday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released its indictment against Sam Bankman-Fried. It details the financial entanglements of FTX, Alameda Research and more than a hundred other companies and individuals. We have tried to disentangle these allegations somewhat … Read more