Kind: Reposts

BU President whines about dissent, calls it “cancel culture”

https://popehat.substack.com/p/speech-or-cancel-culture-at-boston

—@Popehat

New Post: Science Briefs – Edition 37 https://www.worldblindherald.com/science-briefs-edition-37

—@worldblindherald

If you claim the tech you are building is an existential threat, either you’re lying about the threat to sensationalize the tech’s capabilities, or you should stop building it. Or both? It’s probably both.

—@blakereid

If you really want to know why and how ChatGPT works, here is a fitting post about it: Stephen Wolfram explains the basic mechanisms, how the probabilities are calculated, how neural networks work and how ChatGPT uses all that concretely.

It’s a long post and you need some pauses to think about it. But I think it’s worth reading.

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what-is-chatgpt-doing-and-why-does-it-work/

#ChatGPT #AI

—@robert

Honestly, the most alarming thing about AI isn’t so much about AI itself, but about how utterly hell-bent humans are to use it for things that it does a bad job at. H sapiens is bound and determined to use this chisel as a screwdriver.

Case in point: the recent news story about a lawyer (or pair of lawyers – finger pointing is underway) who submitted a filing in federal court which had actually been written by ChatGPT.

What is the one thing one can assume everyone has heard about LLMs? That they make completely bogus shit up, including inventing nonexistent citations.

It would be hard to overstate how unacceptable to a court it is for a lawyer to submit a legal argument which cites nonexistent case law. That’s the kind of shit that can get a lawyer disbarred. It’s a, uh, *career-limiting* move.

But apparently some lawyer actually did it: he took the output of a computer program famous for fabricating false citations and piped it directly into a court.

1/?

—@siderea

I’m hiring for a GiveWP Tech Support position!

$22/hr, full time. Benefits for US folks, heavy focus on maintaining documentation. Apply here: http://app.jobvite.com/m?3e0CTmwA

Boosts are appreciated. Boosts will be compensated via unrecorded happy dances and/or spirit fingers, in addition to the regular positive karmic returns.

#WordPress
#TechSupport
#Documentation
#Editing
#Developer

—@BenUNC

New Post: Blindness Briefs – Edition 74 https://www.worldblindherald.com/blindness-briefs-edition-74

—@worldblindherald

Something must be in the water, because I just got ANOTHER flare up of people asking me about Faraday bags to prevent phone tracking.

Short answer: A Faraday bag probably doesn’t solve your problem; they require great care to use effectively. and your phone can be tracked as soon as you remove it.

But if you DO need one, you want one that actually works. Here’s a short writeup I did a while back on the theory and practice of testing them:

https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/faraday/

TL;DR: Science is fun.

—@mattblaze

Did you see headlines last week about the Surgeon General’s report claiming that it said social media is dangerous for kids? I looked at the actual report and it says no such thing. https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/30/a-deeper-look-at-the-surgeon-generals-report-on-kids-social-media-its-not-what-you-heard/

—@mmasnick

Exfiltrating this from Twitter because I’m proud of it:

—@eric

Spotify’s new AI DJ thing is so asinine: who decided that what people really missed now that they listened to so much streaming music is people talking between songs.

Extreme no thanks, particularly not some shock-jock voiced AI robot.

—@casseagull

When the AI bros scream “Look a monster!” to distract everyone from their practices (data theft, profligate energy usage, scaling of biases, pollution of the information ecosystem), we should make like Scooby-Doo and remove their mask.

https://dair-community.social/@emilymbender/110458293489665076

—@emilymbender

USB-C is all very well but I can’t be the only one who misses having to recite incantations in Old Enochian to keep a SCSI chain working

—@CyclingJourno

Recommended read:
Designing Better Links For The Web by Slava Shestopalov
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2021/12/designing-better-links-websites-emails-guideline/

—@rianrietveld

I do love a three-day weekend, but even when it’s a national holiday, Tuesday always ends up with a “We now join your week, already in progress” feel to it.

There’s no getting around Monday.

—@maxleibman

Any meaningful UX testing in 2023 needs to account for ad blockers and password managers.

If your site or app doesn’t work with popular ad blockers, or it refuses to allow logins pasted in from password managers, it’s broken.

Yes, some executive type will want to argue about this because they think ad blocking will go away or they misunderstood some now outdated infosec guidance. They’re wrong. Users use ad blockers and password managers and if your stuff doesn’t work with them, it’s broken.

—@tommorris

any mf who honestly thinks that uploading your mind into a computer will let you live forever has never had to restore a file from 12 years ago in a format that doesn’t exist anymore

—@tillianisafox

Today’s #project26 blog posts celebrated the 20th birthday of WordPress and my personal story: https://kau-boys.com/3359/wordpress/20-years-of-wordpress-my-personal-journey #WP20 /cc
@mikelittle

—@2ndkauboy