The sooner software makers have to bear full legal liability for their badly designed, faulty products — just like every other class of product manufacturer has to — the better.
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mike morris
@mikro2nd@indieweb.social
mastodon 4.7.3writer; software maker; gardener; craft brewer; tools-for-thinking research; ageing anti-authoritarian; apprentice human being
182 Followers
329 Following
50 Posts
Joined October 29, 2022
Replying to
@jaredwhite@indieweb.social @mrmasterkeyboard@mastodon.social I am NOT in the stack. Because the day MS bought the SlopHub I could see the writing on the wall and left for pastures greener.
Replying to
@VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social Just slap a sticker with the letters "BMW" on the front of that machine, and you can relabel it "Intelligence Test".
Replying to
@muddle@infosec.exchange @golgaloth@writing.exchange And I'd like to see *any* of those take on the Egyptian gods! ;)
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@graydon @danielmunoz @cstross @mitch @lasagne @pluralistic
Diesel is already in short supply for South Africa's Winter grain sowing. Buckle up.
Replying to
@rickf@indieweb.social @0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange Better yet when they want a "wet signature" on a PDF form, to be returned by email... I despair!
Replying to
@Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbt
None of those are bicycles. Some are bicycle saddles, but none are bicycles. #capchaSucks
Replying to
@jzb
Also, if they were to be any good for workers to use, they'd have to... you know... *actually work*.
Replying to
@doragasu@mastodon.sdf.org @codinghorror@infosec.exchange
imho GenAI for coding stems from a category error: Just because we call them "Programming Languages" does not make them languages (in the sense of sentient beings communicating.) They're specialised mathematical notations for expressing algorithms. So pointing a "language" tool — a Large Language Model — at them is bound to result in... mess, imprecision, probabilistic lies, etc. Wrong tech for the domain.
Replying to
@bagder And yet when, many years ago, I made disparaging comments to the effect that it might not be a great idea, I was told, "OK, boomer..." 😂
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@daniel @paoloredaelli @der_mit_ph @thibaultamartin Two points:
- "you can choose to switch it off" is not "opt-in". That's really "opt-out". And defaults really, really matter.
- It's less the "AI" story and much more that they seem unable/unwilling to listen to their user base. It's the tone-deaf responses from a management cohort that get their money from AI-invested corporates.
Replying to
@discobeez@mas.to Electricity has only just come back on (very thick clouds, so our solar system shut down yesterday morning), so still catching up myself. We had over 266mm rain so far; roads are flooded and impassable for smaller cars (like mine), lots of trees down and the chainsaws are a-singin'. We've experienced worse, but most people around here haven't and are all wide-eyed.
Lesson for people with cars run by computer: *don't* drive through the flooded dips in the road!
So that's the last of the Winter crops sown (Broad Beans, mainly to build up the seed-stock for the next season).
I've missed gardening these last few years.
Replying to
Just for reference, 222mm would be more than ¼ of our normal/average rainfall. In. One. Day.
Can we just stick to stating time using UTC±x zones, please. I neither know nor care nor can be arsed to find out what your FubarDT timezone thing is.
It's become clear to me that the United Nations, despite continuing to do many good and useful things, has become unfit for its primary purpose: preventing war.
Difficult question: How to restructure the UN to achieve that aim?
Most difficult question: How to get the many Nation States to agree to such (hypothetical) restructuring, particularly the warmongering permanent members of the Security Council?
RE: @AncientEgyptianDate@archaeo.social
Happy New Year!
Replying to
@mttaggart@infosec.exchange
Don't be misled by the corp-speak nonsense; this was just a trial balloon to calibrate where, how, and how often they can deliver ads through #SlopHub. Ads *WILL* return, just maybe not in PRs.
The only correct response is to move the hell off SlopHub.
Replying to
@harrysintonen
It's a mystery to me how any open-source project can still be using #SlopHub
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@Gustodon@mas.to You can get the Attenuator Plugin for the nexus for the low, low price of just €20/month[*]
[*] Price valid for the introductory period of 3 months only, thereafter €200/month for a minimum period of 10 years (prepaid) unless you cancel before the end of the introductory period.
Replying to
@sb @thibaut_plg @thibaultamartin
It's hard to get someone to "get it" when their salary depends on it.
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@inthehands@hachyderm.io @anildash@me.dm
OK. I'll bite. What — if anything — is this tech actually good for?
(eta: Not simply trawling, here. But I've yet to hear a coherent answer to "So what are the legitimate applications of LLMs?")
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@causticmsngo @helge @chris
My intended implication is that LLMs are actually NOT any good for programming at all. To think that they are is a category error that arises only because the mathematical notations we use for specifying algorithms (i.e. "programming languages") superficially resemble human languages, and that's the only reason a Large LANGUAGE Model can even begin to approach "using" them.
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@bagder@mastodon.social I take my hat off to you for your restraint and politeness in responding. I doubt I'd have managed that level of civility. If they do come back to you (doubtful!) make it a BIG number!
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@ethersync "Teamtype" seems like an association with MS Teams. 😒
I honestly never associated Ethersync with Ethereum until y'all mentioned cryptocurrencies... I'd always thought of it as associating with Ethernet (which fits better).
Replying to
@andrewdessler@mastodon.world
It's simple logic. If the seas are warmer (narrator: "The seas *are * warmer.") then water evaporates from the seas in greater-than-ever quantities. The water vapour rises into the atmosphere. Later this comes down as rain. More water vapour, more rain. More rain, more floods. Simple.
I'll postulate that this is a Gaia mechanism for venting (some) energy to space, since the energy embodied in the water vapour *must* get removed from the water somewhere up in the atmosphere.
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@JMarkOckerbloom@mastodon.social @peterpur@hci.social Reading between the lines, here... this is the sort of crap that should/would normally be caught in copy-edit, BUT: copy editors are being rapidly put out of work by publishers' use of "AI", so I can only think that (perhaps!) this was *seen* and *ignored* by the copy editor. Assuming Springer could be arsed to hire one.
Coming soon to a bookshelf near you: "Revenge of the Copy Editor"
;-)
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@boud@framapiaf.org Thanks for the links. TBH I didn't research much on the topic or anything, and I was thinking of the UNO but probably my comment applies better to the UNSC. And, while other parts of the UN *do* voice concern, it's just not terribly effective, is it? IMHO (and just from primary thinking, and being largely ignorant of the intricacies and nuances) the UNSC is long overdue some reform.
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@sundogplanets@mastodon.social And who the FUCK is the USA to think they have the sole say in a matter that affects the entire world?
Replying to
@chris
I've been asking for a while:
If LLMs are so good at programming, why do they need to use libraries/frameworks at all?
Replying to on mastodon.social
@randahl@mastodon.social
"Mum, why do we live underground?"
"Well son, when the Earth became uninhabitable because a bunch of rich guys polluted it into runaway heat, we wanted to escape to Mars, but we couldn't get there because a bunch of rich guys put so much shit in orbit that the debris from collisions destroy any rocket that gets launched. Nobody wondered why just one rogue nation got to decide to allow them to do that."
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@freequaybuoy@mastodon.social @pluralistic@mamot.fr
That'd be "kakistification" in Oxford, then?
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@dansup Would be helpful if you'd include a one-liner about what the project does/aims to do.
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@tante@tldr.nettime.org
It is hard to make a person understand a thing when their salary is dependent on not understanding it.
Replying to
@gvwilson@mastodon.social
I keep thinking about Gödel's Theorem in relation to Large Lying Machines....
Your irregular reminder that BMW is an intelligence test. If you bought one, you failed.
Replying to
@paninid@mastodon.world @inthehands@hachyderm.io @anildash@me.dm
I've always thought that pattern recognition and synthesis is the one thing that human beings are really, really good at! (Think "faces in clouds".) Indeed, I suspect that much of the confusion/misapplication around LLMs and their outputs lies precisely in our inbuilt compulsion to find patterns given the most tenuous evidence.
DDT was useful, too.
Replying to
@jonmsterling Ask yourself, "Whose interests are served by that narrative? Who is pushing that story?"