4 ms·

Unlike Word files, there is no chance of a Macro Virus in them. I sent our family lawyer some documents converted to Text by request.

hagbard_c 10mo ago
No macro viruses but if your family lawyer uses some LLM-powered thingy in his workflow it might add a new dimension: prompt manipulation/injection attacks. A good spot to hide these would be at about ⅔ distance inside some wall of legalese at the beginning or end of a document since hardly anyone ever reads those.
akoboldfrying 10mo ago
Weeeell... Ya say that, but: Many years ago someone "infected" my computer with a "manual virus": A printed-out sheet of paper placed on top of the computer, telling me to delete all my hard drive's files myself, then photocopy the sheet and put both copies on nearby computers. It was obviously a joke. But in the "modern" agentic era, the same thing in a text file is slightly more realistic as a threat...
delichon 10mo ago
I've known people one-shot by pure text, like Atlas Shrugged, The Communist Manifesto, The Bible, The Qur'an, The Selfish Gene, Godel Escher and Bach, etc. Don't underestimate text.
- ada0000 10mo ago
  What exactly does “one shot” mean here?
  - delichon 10mo ago
    Infected by a packet of ideas that profoundly alters your outlook on life, for good or ill like a mind virus. I've been shot several times, it's thrilling. For me it's always text that does it.
  - spankibalt 10mo ago
    Famous American detective TV show True Detective had the hero annoy his colleague by referring to religion as "language virus that rewrites pathways in the brain" and thereby "dulls critical thinking". In other words, a lot people read shit and it fries their mixers. Obviously, it can also work the other way. Et cetera.
  - Izkata 10mo ago
    "One shot" means it only takes one exposure to have an effect, instead of multiple exposures over time having a cumulative effect.
    - 1718627440 10mo ago
      I definitely have read philosophic articles where I was instantly convinced and found it to bring into words, what I have long thought of. Either something contains a logic error or something is the truth, there is no maybe if I read it enough it will become true. That would just be self-deception.
- anonymous908213 10mo ago
  A clever quip, but I have to point out that most adherents for a given ideology have never actually read the canonical text of their ideology. The Bible particularly was generally inaccessible to laypeople for a ~1000 year period, who would typically learn everything they knew about it filtered through the preachers of the Church. Even today with easy access, a majority of Christians have not read it.
  - 1718627440 10mo ago
    So the "employees" of X are untrustworthy, but the collection of circular letters for the "employees" of X is not. This doesn't make any sense. > Even today with easy access, a majority of Christians have not read it. Depending on the denomination, 50% to 100% of the service they do revolves around reading from that book. > preachers of the Church Also what do you understand by "the Church".
    - anonymous908213 10mo ago
      It should be clear by "a ~1000 year period" that I was talking about history with that sentence, not the present day. For a very long time there was only one Church, the Catholic Church. Any "denominations" were local deviations considered heresy worthy of extermination, and it took the deadliest war in European history (prior to the world wars) for Christians to be able to openly practice beliefs that diverged from the Church. > So the "employees" of X are untrustworthy, but the collection of circular letters for the "employees" of X is not. This doesn't make any sense. I am not saying anything about whether the text of various ideologies is trustworthy or next. I am contending that contrary to the original comment I was replying to, it's not actually text that converts people to most ideologies. For Christianity, people generally adopt it for reasons like: being born into a Christian household/society; societal pressure; a desire for community; having received charitable aid when they needed it most; mid-life crises seeking a purpose in life; reckoning with mortality after a near-death experience or losing a loved one; witnessing something they perceive as miraculous. There are many, many reasons people become Christians, but I have never once heard of someone being converted merely by reading the Bible, and I suspect that such an occurence is exceedingly rare relative to all the other means of adoption.
- HPsquared 10mo ago
  The real version of the information hazard in Snow Crash.
reincarnate0x14 10mo ago
Comically the use of curl | bash managed to shoehorn them in there, and there were the occasional terminal escape characters that could do funny and sometimes mischievous things. There used to be something of a game of making specific files that would change screen colors or play songs off terminal bells, etc, tailored for specific terminals or command prompt windows. I remember a few short animated sequences using various backspaces and colors that only really worked if you could expect the text to be loaded at specific baud rates or in specific BBS software.
eviks 10mo ago
You can block macros in Word, so you're only left with unformatted downsides?

hagbard_c 10mo ago

No macro viruses but if your family lawyer uses some LLM-powered thingy in his workflow it might add a new dimension: prompt manipulation/injection attacks. A good spot to hide these would be at about ⅔ distance inside some wall of legalese at the beginning or end of a document since hardly anyone ever reads those.

akoboldfrying 10mo ago

Weeeell... Ya say that, but: Many years ago someone "infected" my computer with a "manual virus": A printed-out sheet of paper placed on top of the computer, telling me to delete all my hard drive's files myself, then photocopy the sheet and put both copies on nearby computers. It was obviously a joke. But in the "modern" agentic era, the same thing in a text file is slightly more realistic as a threat...

delichon 10mo ago

I've known people one-shot by pure text, like Atlas Shrugged, The Communist Manifesto, The Bible, The Qur'an, The Selfish Gene, Godel Escher and Bach, etc. Don't underestimate text.

ada0000 10mo ago
What exactly does “one shot” mean here?
- delichon 10mo ago
  Infected by a packet of ideas that profoundly alters your outlook on life, for good or ill like a mind virus. I've been shot several times, it's thrilling. For me it's always text that does it.
- spankibalt 10mo ago
  Famous American detective TV show True Detective had the hero annoy his colleague by referring to religion as "language virus that rewrites pathways in the brain" and thereby "dulls critical thinking". In other words, a lot people read shit and it fries their mixers. Obviously, it can also work the other way. Et cetera.
- Izkata 10mo ago
  "One shot" means it only takes one exposure to have an effect, instead of multiple exposures over time having a cumulative effect.
  - 1718627440 10mo ago
    I definitely have read philosophic articles where I was instantly convinced and found it to bring into words, what I have long thought of. Either something contains a logic error or something is the truth, there is no maybe if I read it enough it will become true. That would just be self-deception.
anonymous908213 10mo ago
A clever quip, but I have to point out that most adherents for a given ideology have never actually read the canonical text of their ideology. The Bible particularly was generally inaccessible to laypeople for a ~1000 year period, who would typically learn everything they knew about it filtered through the preachers of the Church. Even today with easy access, a majority of Christians have not read it.
- 1718627440 10mo ago
  So the "employees" of X are untrustworthy, but the collection of circular letters for the "employees" of X is not. This doesn't make any sense. > Even today with easy access, a majority of Christians have not read it. Depending on the denomination, 50% to 100% of the service they do revolves around reading from that book. > preachers of the Church Also what do you understand by "the Church".
  - anonymous908213 10mo ago
    It should be clear by "a ~1000 year period" that I was talking about history with that sentence, not the present day. For a very long time there was only one Church, the Catholic Church. Any "denominations" were local deviations considered heresy worthy of extermination, and it took the deadliest war in European history (prior to the world wars) for Christians to be able to openly practice beliefs that diverged from the Church. > So the "employees" of X are untrustworthy, but the collection of circular letters for the "employees" of X is not. This doesn't make any sense. I am not saying anything about whether the text of various ideologies is trustworthy or next. I am contending that contrary to the original comment I was replying to, it's not actually text that converts people to most ideologies. For Christianity, people generally adopt it for reasons like: being born into a Christian household/society; societal pressure; a desire for community; having received charitable aid when they needed it most; mid-life crises seeking a purpose in life; reckoning with mortality after a near-death experience or losing a loved one; witnessing something they perceive as miraculous. There are many, many reasons people become Christians, but I have never once heard of someone being converted merely by reading the Bible, and I suspect that such an occurence is exceedingly rare relative to all the other means of adoption.
HPsquared 10mo ago
The real version of the information hazard in Snow Crash.

reincarnate0x14 10mo ago

Comically the use of curl | bash managed to shoehorn them in there, and there were the occasional terminal escape characters that could do funny and sometimes mischievous things. There used to be something of a game of making specific files that would change screen colors or play songs off terminal bells, etc, tailored for specific terminals or command prompt windows. I remember a few short animated sequences using various backspaces and colors that only really worked if you could expect the text to be loaded at specific baud rates or in specific BBS software.

eviks 10mo ago

You can block macros in Word, so you're only left with unformatted downsides?