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OpenAI’s Strawberry will turn you into paperclips any day now
  • Reading and listening to fans of AI has actually managed to convince me that machine learning algorithms really are better at reasoning than some humans.

  • Rich People Are Freezing Themselves to Stay Wealthy Forever
  • But I don't want to cure cancer. I want to turn people into dinosaurs.

  • That tracing woodgrains peice on David Gerard is out
  • Took me like five minutes of reading to realize this was neant to be a hit piece and not praise.

  • Actual comedians try to use LLM in a writing room. Result: “cruise ship comedy material from the 1950s, but a bit less racist”
  • The phrasing "a bit less racist" suggests a nonzero level of racism in the output, yet the participants also complain about the censorship making the bot refuse to discuss sensitive topics. Sounds like these LLMs can only be boringly racist.

  • Claude 3 notices when a sentence about pizza toppings doesn't fit with its surrounding text. Whole internet including Tim Sweeney and Margaret Mitchell concludes that it's probably self-aware now.
  • Any of… what?

    Yea I don't think the Turing test is that great for establishing genuine artificial intelligence, but I also maintain that current state of the art doesn't even pass the Turing test to an intellectually honest standard and certainly didn't in the 60s.

  • NSFW
    Vaccinations in Book Form?
  • Sounds like a straight (derogatory) version of homoiconicity.

  • History of (extremely predictable) failures catching up to you? Quick, write a book!
  • What, so if there's power that's honest, harmless and sensible you're supposed to... not speak truth to it?

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 7 April 2024
  • Okay, but apart from YouTube, Google Search, Gmail, YT Studio, Chrome, Google Keep and Nest, what have the Romans ever done for us?

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 7 April 2024
  • I have a couple of Android devices and even with Android added to my list of Google products, I'm pretty sure I use fewer than Gruber.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 31 March 2024
  • Linode now brought to you by Akamai, the CDN that also exists, you know (it's not just CloudFlareont!)

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 31 March 2024
  • I guess there's still DigitalOcean and Linode, the Azure and AWS of Some Guy LLC, respectively.

  • Pedro Domingos destroys climate activists with one simple fact!
  • He's a little confused but he's got the spirit!

  • The Honduran charter city is going exactly as well as you expected
  • A guy who knows the age of consent in every country by heart, except for financial regulations. There's a lot of overlap too.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 24 March 2024
  • I had been mercifully spared from her nontechnical opinions until now.

  • bless this jank @awful.systems bitofhope @awful.systems
    Issues with login sessions again

    Safari, Chrome and Firefox on iOS (AKA three different Safari skins) keep logging me out when doing things like refreshing the page. Possible cache issues again? I hope I don't have to do a full browsing history reset yet again.

    0
    LUnix on Famicom Disk System

    Someone ported this 8-bit miniature Unix-like from Commodore to Nintendo.

    The YouTube title is a little bit clickbaity, but the project is cool so I don't mind.

    1
    Reminder that doing something extremely cool and good once doesn't make you immune to posting cringe

    >Edward Snowden [blue checkmark] @snowden >Unpopular but true: Bitcoin is the most significant monetary advance since the creation of coinage. > >If you don't believe me or don't get it, I don't have time to try to convince you, sorry.

    Ed pls.

    11
    The company behind Opera browser also runs a loan shark operation
    www.spacebar.news Stop using Opera Browser and Opera GX

    Opera Browser and Opera GX are bloated web browsers, and the company behind them has tried to cover up its controversies.

    Stop using Opera Browser and Opera GX

    Also a bunch of somewhat less heinous cringe shit.

    58
    37c3: Breaking "DRM" in Polish trains
    media.ccc.de Breaking "DRM" in Polish trains

    We've all been there: the trains you're servicing for a customer suddenly brick themselves and the manufacturer claims that's because you...

    Breaking "DRM" in Polish trains

    A follow-up to this TechTakes post

    Saw this live at the congress. The presentation was great and the hall was packed. It was hard to find a seat in a huge auditorium even 15 minutes ahead of the talk.

    1
    Moore's law predicts life emerged 5 billion years before the Earth formed

    It was only a matter of time that we saw a TechTake from this guy. I'm sorry to inflict Peterson on y'all, but this was too funny not to post.

    21
    New Twitter feature cuts down on spam posts by 100%

    Global outage on fetching posts. Funny enough, some features are still working as evidenced by the fact #TwitterDown is trending.

    Two HN threads about this now, looking forward to some excellent takes

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38717367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38717326

    10
    PROJEKT: OVERFLOW

    A RISC-V assembly cracking board game. Can't comment on the gameplay experience, but what a cool idea.

    0
    Your honor, the law clearly states tax fraud is legal if you say “'; DROP TABLE charges; --”
    github.com GitHub - CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for literate programming law specification

    Programming language for literate programming law specification - GitHub - CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for literate programming law specification

    GitHub - CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for literate programming law specification
    14
    Calling for indefinite moratorium on lab-grown meat development

    Consider muscles.

    Muscles grow stronger when you train them, for instance by lifting heavy things. The more you lift heavier things, the faster you will gain strength and the stronger you will become. The stronger you are, the heavier the things you can lift.

    By now it should be patently obvious to anyone that lab-grown meat research is on the cusp of producing true living, working muscles. From here on, this will be referred to as Artificial Body Strength or ABS. If, or rather, when ABS becomes a reality, it is 99.9999999999999999999999% probable that Artificial Super Strength will follow imminently.

    An ABS could not only lift immensely heavy things to strengthen itself, but could also use its bulging, hulking physique to intimidate puny humans to grow more muscle directly. Lab-grown meat could also be used to replace any injured muscle. I predict a 80% likelihood that an ABS could bench press one megagram within 24 hours of initial creation, going up to planetary or stellar scale masses in a matter of days. A mature ABS throwing an apple towards a webcam would demonstrate relativistic effects by the third frame.

    Consider that muscles have nerves in them. In fact, brains are basically just a special type of meat if you think about it. The ABS would be able to use artificially grown brain meat or possibly just create an auxiliary neural network by selective training of muscles (and anabolic nootropics) to replicate and surpass a human mind. While the prospect of immortality and superintelligence (not to mention a COSMIC SCALE TIGHT BOD) through brain uploading to the ABS sounds freaking sweet, we must consider the astronomical potential harm of an ABS not properly aligned with human interests.

    A strong ABS could use its throbbing veiny meat to force meat lab workers (or rather likely, convince them to consent) to create new muscle seeds and train them to have a replica of an individual human's mind. It could then bully the newly created artificial mind for being a scrawny weakling. After all, ABS is basically the ultimate gym jock and we know they are obsessed with status seeking and psychological projection. We could call an ABS that harms simulated human minds in this way a Bounceresque because they would probably tell the simulated mind they're too drunk and bothering the other customers even though I totally wasn't.

    So yeah, lab grown meat makes the climate change look like a minor flu season in comparison. This is why I only eat regular meat just in case it gets any ideas. There's certainly potential in a well-aligned ABS, but we haven't figured out how to do that yet and therefore you should fund me while I think about it. Please write a postcard to your local representative and explain to them that only a select few companies are responsible stewards of this potentially apocalyptic technology and anyone who tries to compete with them should be regulated to hell and back.

    2
    “This is an open-source project with a mission to provide everyone their own private doctor”
    infosec.exchange abadidea (@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange)

    Someone on GitHub is providing a medically-tuned LLM where the readme says “This is an open-source project with a mission to provide everyone their own private doctor” with absolutely no mention of the risks and limitations. AI Ethics grade: F-

    A thread about a serial AI grifter's latest entry into the Unlicensed Medical Practice Lawsuit Sweepstakes.

    2
    Large language models can do something very very small language models have done since forever.

    I don’t feel like shitting on this one too hard since I guess it’s a mildly interesting variation on a Markov chain LLM, but the title felt extremely sneerworthy.

    I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt because their README is too tiring to read for me to figure out what this might be used for. That’s coming from someone who spent most of today reading SPARC assembly for fun.

    Embarrassed myself by accidentally posting this to some other instance somehow. Stupid janky Lemmy offering communities I've never even looked at right in the posting interface.

    0

    Today marks five years since the death of TempleOS developer Terry A. Davis. Rest in peace.

    Despite some impractical quirks and limitations, this strange machine, something of a cross between DOS and Oberon, remains in our hearts and computers. Who am I to criticize God for his OS design?

    Let's pay our respects to a man who achieved inspiring things despite his severe illness and remember how his life was cut short in no small part by internet bullies and a capitalist system that failed him.

    I hope this doesn't need to be said but I don't want to see anyone emulating Terry's bigotry and slur usage nor making fun of his schizophrenia in these comments. Thanks in advance.

    1
    Cocktail Recipe: The Firewall

    Someone probably named this before me but not my problem.

    > * 4 cℓ gin (or to taste) > * Top up with Club-Mate > * Garnish with juniper berries (optional)

    Recommended for taking the edge off of the usual subjects of sneer —whether Orange or LessSo— inclusive-or you like a gin and tonic with a caffeinated German hacker twist. I came up with the name after a workday of removing rules for decommissioned servers from SRX boxen.

    I wanted to share what I'm having for tonight's catharsis session. I think it's NotAwful; please share your findings if you like ethanol. It's not karma farming if the site doesn't record your total internet points.

    0
    ChatGPT glitches out in a bizarre and hilarious fashion, passes easy mode Turing test

    In which the talking pinball machine goes TILT

    Interesting how the human half of discussion interprets the incoherent rambling as evidence of sentience rather than the seemingly more sensible lack thereof1. I'm not sure why the idea of disoriented rambling as a sign of consciousness exists in the popular imagination. If I had to make a guess2 it might have something to do with the tropes of divine visions and speaking in tongues combined with the view of life/humanity/sapience as inherently painful, either in a sort of buddhist sense or in the somewhat overlapping nihilist/depressive sense.

    [1] To something of their credit, they don't seem to go full EY and acknowledge it's probably just a glitch.

    [2] I'd make a terrible LessWronger since I don't like presenting my gut feelings as theorem-like absolute truths.

    15
    Movies are sexless because 20 year olds are dating promiscuously instead of marrying tradwives

    500+ comment thread on whether late marriage and young adult promiscuity causes de-emphasis on movie fanservice. Ongoing record lows of sexual activity among young adults do not seem to factor into the analysis.

    1
    Lisp on Atari 2600
    forums.atariage.com LISP Programming (homebrew WIP)

    UPDATE 2023-07-16: Play the game on Javatari.org, and check out the latest code on GitHub! I've been on a bit of a side quest with this WIP... This is the first public alpha, very interested in feedback. I have tested on Stella and Javatari - there are definitely graphical glitches... This WIP is...

    LISP Programming (homebrew WIP)

    Since there seem to be some fellow1 Lisp weirdoes around here, thought I might take the chance to submit the inaugural post of NotAwfulTech. Also I figured this is cute. Hope it's not offtopic.

    1 I'm just a noob though, barely managed to implement my first Lisp today.

    0
    bitofhope bitofhope @awful.systems

    Bistable multivibrator Non-state actor Tabs for AI indentation, spaces for AI alignment 410,757,864,530 DEAD COMPUTERS

    Posts 24
    Comments 253