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The headline is a bit misleading.

It's not "no attorney-client privilege for AI chats" in general.

But a situation where the same would also apply if, instead of going to an chat bot, the person had gone to a random 3rd party non-attorney related person.

As in:

- the documents where not communication between the defendant and their attorney, but the defendant and the AI

- the AI is no attorney

- the attorney didn't instruct the defendant to use the AI / the court found the defendant did not communicate with the AI with the purpose of finding legal consule

- the communications with the AI (provider) where not confidential as a) it's a arbitrary 3rd party and b) they explicitly exclude usage for legal cases in their TOS

Still this isn't a nothing burger as some of the things the court pointed out can become highly problematic in other context. Like the insistence that attorney privilege is fundamentally build on a trusting human relationship, instead of a trusting relationship. Or that AI isn't just part of facilitating communication, like a spell checker, word program or voice mail box, legal book you look things up. All potentially 3rd parties all not by themself communication with a human but all part of facilitating the communication.


Ironically drop box and one drive folders I can still somewhat understand as they are "backuped" in other ways (but potentially not reliable so I also understand why people do not like that).

But .git? It does not mean you have it synced to GitHub or anything reliable?

If you do anything then only backup the .git folder and not the checkout.

But backing up the checkout and not the .git folder is crazy.


I use backblaze and have repos I dont push for this reason so I am a bit stunned lol

Microsoft makes no guarantees on onedrive, you are responsible for backing up that data. Of course they try hard to keep it safe, but contractually they give no promises

> drop box and one drive folders I can still somewhat understand as they are "backuped" in other ways

No they are not. This is explicitly addressed in the article itself.


Parent is using "backuped" to mean "likely in some cloud (latest version)". And that may explain why BB excludes .git folders.

You are using it to mean "maintaining full version history", I believe? Another important consideration.


> You are using it to mean "maintaining full version history", I believe?

No, they are using it to mean “backed up”. Like, “if this data gets deleted or is in any way lost locally, it’s still backed remotely (even years later, when finally needed)”.

I’m astonished so many people here don’t know what a backup is! No wonder it’s easy for Backblaze to play them for fools.


definition of the term backup by most sources is one the line of:

> a copy of information held on a computer that is stored separately from the computer

there is nothing about _any_ versioning, or duration requirements or similar

To use your own words, I fear its you who doesn't know what a backup is and assume a lot other additional (often preferable(1)) things are part of that term.

Which is a common problem, not just for the term backup.

There is a reason lawyers define technical terms in a for this contract specific precise way when making contracts.

Or just requirements engineering. Failing there and you might end up having a backup of all your companies important data in a way susceptible to encrypting your files ransomware or similar.

---

(1): What often is preferable is also sometimes the think you really don't want. Like sometimes keeping data around too long is outright illegal. Sometimes that also applies to older versions only. And sometimes just some short term backups are more then enough for you use case. The point here is the term backup can't mean what you are imply it does because a lot of existing use cases are incompatible with it.


> To use your own words, I fear its you who doesn't know what a backup is

Feel free to use my reputation, instead: when I say a system is backed up, data cannot be lost by that system being destroyed, because an independent copy always exists. This satisfies those whom it concerns, who put their money where their mouth is, whereas your more generous but insufficient definition would absolutely not be good enough.

When you assure a client that a system is backed up, which definition do they expect from you?


> When you assure a client that a system is backed up, which definition do they expect from you?

the one in the contract (and the various EU laws)

that is not a satisfying answer, I know

e.g. in some past projects the customers explicitly did _not_ want year long backups and outright forbid them, redundant storage systems + daily backups kept for ~1-2 weeks (I don't remember) had been pretty close to the legal limit of what we are allowed to have for that project (1)

the point I'm making was never that a good general purpose backup solutions shouldn't have versioning and years of backups

it's that

1. the word backup just doesn't mean much, so you have to be very explicit about what is needed, and sometimes that is the opposite of the "generic best solution"

2. If data is explicitly handled by another backup solution, even if it's a very bad one, it's understandable that the default is not to handle it yourself. (Through only the default, you should always have an overwrite option, be warned if defaults change, etc.).

Insisting a word means something it doesn't in a way where most non-tech people tend to use it in the definition you say isn't right just isn't helpful at all. Telling them that this is a very bad form of backup which they probably shouldn't use is much more likely to be taken serious.

---

(1): Side note: It's because all data we had is backed up else where, by a different solution, and sometimes can be a bit sensitive. So the customers preferred data loss (on our side, not on theirs) over any data being kept longer then needed (and as such there being more data at any point of time if there is some hacker succeeding or similar). And from what I have heard that project is still around working the same way.

But ironically that is similar to the case here, the data is owned/handled by a different system and as such we should not handle the backup.


But isn't that exactly what Dropbox does? If I delete a file on my PC, I can go to Dropbox.com and restore it, to some period in the past (I think it depends on what you pay for). In fact, I can see every version that's changed during the retention period and choose which version to restore.

Maintaining version history out to a set retention period is a backup...no?


The author of article explicitly ignored both of them come with versioning so it is not just sync, you have old version of files too

normally this folder are synced to dropbox and/or onedrive

both services have internal backups to reduce the chance they lose data

both services allow some limited form of "going back to older version" (like the article states itself).

Just because the article says "sync is not backup" doesn't mean that is true, I mean it literally is backup by definition as it: makes a copy in another location and even has versioning.

It's just not _good enough_ backup for their standards. Maybe even standards of most people on HN, but out there many people are happy with way worse backups, especially wrt. versioning for a lot of (mostly static) media the only reason you need version rollback is in case of a corrupted version being backed up. And a lot of people mostly backup personal photos/videos and important documents, all static by nature.

Through

1. it doesn't really fulfill the 3-2-1 rules it's only 2-1-1 places (local, one backup on ms/drop box cloud, one offsite). Before when it was also backed up to backblaze it was 3-2-1 (kinda). So them silently stopping still is a huge issue.

2. newer versions of the 3-2-1 rule also say treat 2 not just as 2 backups, but also 2 "vendors/access accounts" with the one-drive folder pretty much being onedrive controlled this is 1 vendor across local and all backups. Which is risky.


Oftentimes the important data that needs restoring is in the checkout: uncommitted and unstaged changes that represent hours of work.

I have multiple drives that started out as their own os. Each of them has a Dropbox folder in the standard location. Each of them has a different set of files in them (I deduped at one point), with some overlap of different versions. I no longer use Dropbox, so none of these are synced anywhere.

They don't need to be in my case, I'm only using them now because of existing shortcuts and VM shares and programs configured to source information from them. That doesn't mean I don't want them backed up.

Same for OneDrive: Microsoft configured my account for OneDrive when I set it up. Then I immediately uninstalled it (I don't want it). But I didn't notice that my desktop and documents folders live there. I hate it. But by the time I noticed it, it was already being used as a location for multiple programs that would need to be reconfigured, and it was easier to get used to it than to fix it. Several things I've forgotten about would likely break in ways I wouldn't notice for weeks/months. Multiple self-hosted servers for connecting to my android devices would need to reindex (Plex, voidtools everything, several remote systems that mount via sftp and connected programs would decide all my files were brand new and had never been seen before)


if there where an issue yes,

but it doesn't look like there actually is a major issues. A look at satellite images it looks more like a problem for a handful of people across all of Denmark which then is misrepresented by populist, to push anti-solar propaganda.

(Oh, and we don't even know how much the people in Hjolderup do resent it. Like seriously, they might even have put the solar panels there them-self to make money, idk.. Because conveniently the article shows pictures of Hjolderup to invoke a felling of how terrible it is, but never any interviews or options with anyone _from_ Hjolderup. )


> corn and other crops specifically for biodiesel.

honestly that always sounded very misguided to me

fields are not perfectly renewable, biomas gets removed from them and fertilizers can only help so much in any given time frame

mostly corn/raps mono-culture can make that easily far worse

and not needing to import food can safe a lot of energy too

also as you mentioned, modern solar panels seem overall more efficient

in difference to solar or wind, biodiesel just seem a very bad choice


we don't need something that long distance at all

EU has enough areas with sparse population and not that much nature which also are south enough to have it work out well with solar panels of the current generations.

And besides that even most EU countries have enough places in them to still put a lot of solar panels without much issues and/or replacing fields.

going as far as North Africa is a bit too far to be convenient for power transport


"from North Africa to Europe" is, to be clear, ~9 miles in spots.

in the distances we speak about we do so all the time with more centralized energy sources (like e.g. nuklear) due to their centralized nature

the issue is less the transport distances but changes in "from where to where" sometimes needing some extensions/improvements to the power grid. Through commonly in ways which anyway make sense and all pretty much "standard" solutions well understood. Through there are some more complicated exceptions to that.

EDIT: "distances we speak about" assumed less many local less dense populate/suitable spots across the EU, not a mega project like a energy pipeline from North Afrika.


look at satellite images of Denmark or the village in question

- that village is the exception, not the norm at all

- that village is in a "small" (on agricultural scale) strip of solar panels, around which there are green fields over green fields over green field ....

- the photos are deceptive, the first is from the start of the strip to the end and contains the huge majority of all solar panels in like a 50km? 100km? radius. The second photo does not show the village but a separate house up the street, if the photo where in a bit more flat angle you would see a normal filed behind the solar panels. The village itself has a "strip" of (small) green fields around it which should make it less bad to live there.

I mean don't get me wrong it probably sucks for the home owners in Hjolderup. But it's not representative for the situation in Denmark at all.


from the article which uses intentionally deceptive photography angles to paint a very different picture, yes

more interesting is, if that is actually true. Or only true because idk. the investors also bought the land and they profits are used to amortize the land buying cost etc.


not buying that this isn't anti renewable propaganda for the US

the images in the article looks bad

until you take a short look at satellite images and realize:

- it's not the norm but the exception

- the photos are made to make it look maximally bad in a deceptive/manipulative way,

and that is even in context, that Denmark is a special case in that it both quite small and has little "dead" (not agriculturally efficiently usable land). And many old "culturally" protected houses where fitting solar on top of it is far more complicated/inefficient. Don't get me wrong it isn't the only special case, but there are very many countries which don't really have such issues.

Also quite interestingly this "iron fields" can be "not bad" from a nature perspective, at least compared to mono-culture with pesticide usage. Due to the plant and animal live below them. Through that is assuming people do extra steps to prevent that live.


There is an art to taking pictures of solar farms from exactly the right angle so that the panels seem continuous, often making use of deep shadows to cover the gaps.

It's similar to the telephoto shots of wind farms taken from far away that make them seem really close together.


"not buying that this isn't anti renewable propaganda for the US"

Its the Guardian so that is a very unlikely motivation.


_Something_ motivates them, though. They have been on a wild anti-solar bend the last year or more. Dozens of articles, all with the same anti-solar NIMBY bent

That's just your reading comprehension.

They are reporting on an anti-solar NIMBY movement and mention how the far-right is pushing the issue. That doesn't mean they share the same opinion.


Haha, the Guardian is just as much in bed with the capital class.

The guardian have previously been found to generate a significant amount of ad revenue from fossil fuel companies. They aren't politically aligned with it, but are financially. Remember that a large portion of the left in the UK are also anti-solar since they are pro-green nature and they have yet to make a choice on this.

P.s I am pro renewable and pro-solar/wind/nuclear just to clarify that this is nothing about my personal beliefs.


Cite your source. The Guardian stopped accepting ads from the fossil industry 6 years ago - [0]

It is convenient to be suspicious against news that isn’t aligned with your views.

[0] - https://www.theguardian.com/help/insideguardian/2020/jan/29/...


I'm aware of this policy. I cannot re-find the source, but there was an investigative piece somewhere that found they continued to take money from fossil-fuel aligned companies. I cannot find it after trying to look again admittably, though I am unsure if it because of my poor memory and that it didn't exist in the first place or because search engines are poor at this sort of thing. They do however continue to take ads from very high carbon industries like airlines and the such however.

They largely share my views, I am not suspicious because they don't align with my views, I am suspicious of all profit-motivated companies equally.


The satellite photos of Hjolderup look worse than the photos in the article to me... the photos in the article seem like a fair representation of the consequences of installing solar fields like this--your house and town end up surrounded by solar panels.

Zoom out a bit though, and you quickly realise it's not the norm. There is vastly more farm land throughout the country and Hjolderup is the exception, not the rule.

100%

It also presents the draw man that solar can only go in huge fields that would otherwise grow food.

There are plenty of rooftops and car parks that can be covered in solar to excellent benefit.

Ie https://www.eventplanner.net/news/10582_largest-solar-carpor...


> It also presents the draw man that solar can only go in huge fields that would otherwise grow food.

> There are plenty of rooftops and car parks that can be covered in solar to excellent benefit.

It's worth calling this approach out too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrivoltaics


and field which have been damaged due to overuse and incorrect handling and preferable shouldn't be used for the next ~50 year

> - it's not the norm but the exception

I bet makes the person dealing with the outcome of being surrounded by them feel a lot better.


I can't even read it because you either have to accept all tracking or pay a subscription fee. Pretty sure that's against the GDPR? Anyway, not a good look.

It works fine with js disabled.

Isn't GDPR an EU thing?

Well an EU/EEA thing. And I'm in the EEA, so it applies when I visit The Guardian.

it's a question of tooling, modding kits

most times it this tooling which causes issues not the mod itself

For very popular games it's not rare if moddingkit/tooling producer (or contributes) made the tooling work on Linux, but it can be very hit or miss.

but it increasingly more "just works", kinda, somewhat


Yeah. I recently tried to run an auxiliary program (Mass Effect save editor because the character creator sucks) on Linux which was only written for Windows. Getting it running in the same Proton "space" (bottle?) was not an enormous challenge, but it was very far from "just works".

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