Open post PointyFluff @PointyFluff@lemmy.ml · 8mo ago Replying to @flango@lemmy.eco.br teens and twentysomethings today are of a very different demographic and have markedly different media consumption habits compared to Wikipedia’s forebears. Gen Z and Gen Alpha readers are accustomed to TikTok, YouTube, and mobile-first visual media. Their impatience for Wikipedia’s impenetrable walls of text, as any parent of kids of this age knows, arguably threatens the future of the internet’s collaborative knowledge clearinghouse. The Wikimedia Foundation knows this, too. Research has shown that many readers today greatly value quick overviews of any article, before the reader considers whether to dive into the article’s full text. So last June, the Foundation launched a modest experiment they called “Simple Article Summaries.” The summaries consisted of AI-generated, simplified text at the top of complex articles. Summaries were clearly labeled as machine-generated and unverified, and they were available only to mobile users who opted in. Even after all these precautions, however, the volunteer editor community barely gave the experiment time to begin. Editors shut down Simple Article Summaries within a day of its launch. The response was fierce. Editors called the experiment a “ghastly idea” and warned of “immediate and irreversible harm” to Wikipedia’s credibility. Comments in the village pump (a community discussion page) ranged from blunt (“Yuck”) to alarmed, with contributors raising legitimate concerns about AI hallucinations and the erosion of editorial oversight. It's damn near impossible to make any credible edits to any wikipedia page, anymore. I've just stopped all together.
Open post PointyFluff @PointyFluff@lemmy.ml · 8mo ago Replying to @flango@lemmy.eco.br They want to dumb down Wikipedia simple.wikipedia.org
Open post PointyFluff @PointyFluff@lemmy.ml · 7mo ago Replying to @technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com If you are to believe the glossy marketing campaigns about ‘quantum computing’, then we are on the cusp of a computing revolution, yet back in the real world things look a lot less dire. At least if you’re worried about quantum computers (QCs) breaking every single conventional encryption algorithm in use today, because at this point they cannot even factor 21 yet without cheating. In the article by [Craig Gidney] the basic problem is explained, which comes down to simple exponentials. Specifically the number of quantum gates required to perform factoring increases exponentially, allowing QCs to factor 15 in 2001 with a total of 21 two-qubit entangling gates. Extrapolating from the used circuit, factoring 21 would require 2,405 gates, or 115 times more. underlying article: algassert.com/post/2500 Quantum Computers are bullshit.
Open post PointyFluff @PointyFluff@lemmy.ml · 8mo ago Replying to @BallyM@lemmy.world Setting aside Big Tech and surveillance capitalism for a minute — I wonder if fediverse microblogging apps like Mastodon aren’t fairly antisocial and inclined to individualism, while apps like Lemmy are more community and artefact/stuff-to-share centric. People are complex, societies infinitely more so, but software can nudge us this way or that way too. I’d be interested to hear what others here think. lemmy = reddit reposts + furry porn mastadon = nazibot reposts + furry porn
Open post PointyFluff @PointyFluff@lemmy.ml · 8mo ago Replying to @bleistift2@sopuli.xyz Simple English is for people who would like a simpler language. I’m advocating for reduced *scope* – or at least better organization of detail. Move stuff that’s irrelevant in the great scheme of things to subpages or pages with narrower scope, instead of writing one single compendium on a topic. I feel like the English Wikipedia is already better at this. In the German, on the other hand, the first sentence sometimes contains multiple lines of etymological derivations of the article’s title before it even mentions what it’s about (as soon as I stumble upon one of these monstrosities again, I’ll report the example here). Then go make one.