Especially galling when the sentence starts with "like it or not". Wrong. AI is not like a disease or a natural law that stays with us whether we want it or not. If humanity decides we don't like AI, we could just stop doing it. "Like it or not, hitting yourself is here to stay" is only true if someone is actively forcing me to hit myself, and whoever is forcing me probably doesn't honestly think they're doing me a favor.
Homeopathy is here to stay and (a) that's a bad thing, (b) it could be more popular, but thankfully is not, (c) we don't need to believe fraudulent claims about its benefits, (d) we could and maybe should try and make it even less popular, and (e) the continued practice of homeopathy in parts of human society should have little to no impact on the daily lives of most people and the vast majority should be given the opportunity to ignore it instead of integrating it into every possible facet of their lives. Same goes for AI slop.
Today's bullshit that annoys me: Wikiwand. From what I can tell their grift is that it's just a shitty UI wrapper for Wikipedia that sells your data to who the fuck knows to make money for some Israeli shop. Also they SEO the fuck out of their stupid site so that every time I search for something that has a Finnish wikipedia page, the search results also contain a pointless shittier duplicate result from wikiwand dot com. Has anyone done a deeper investigation into what their deal is or at least some kind of rant I could indulge in for catharsis?
When you nearly miss the submission deadline for the performative misogyny olympics (genuine opinions only edition). Alsl the problem with everything is that there exist things which are not gambling or are insufficiently unnecessarily high stakes gambling.
I feel like calling it race pseudoscience inadvertently suggests the existence of legitimate race science.
This is why I absolutely cannot fucking stand creative work being referred to as "content". "Content" is how you refer to the stuff on a website when you're designing the layout and don't know what actually goes on the page yet. "Content" is how you refer to the collection of odds and ends in your car's trunk. "Content" is what marketers call the stuff that goes around the ads.
"Content"... is Whatever.
I was going to make a comment on the Stubsack thread about how it kind of ticks me off how "content creator" has permeated its way so deep into the vernacular. I can forgive it when it's used as a clumsy term to talk about creative workers across multiple media, but something like a video essayist calling another video essayist a content creator just gives me the ick. Have some pride and solidarity in your art form, for fuck's sake.
Also HP has so far had this kind of a reverse Midas touch where they turn every networking gear company they touch into HP.
Wendy O: Is this a generative AI collection? Not a fan of those. To me, it's not necessarily real art.
Another whale: They're not all the same.
Wendy O: I don't care. It takes away from the real artist.
Wow, look at the time. It's stopped o'clock!
HPE buys Juniper. Fuck.
Comic Book Guy energy
Between the title of the show and one of the judges being a guy called Mario Narwhal I gotta ask, are coiners trying to reclaim the word "whale", as in a cash cow gambler/lifestyle goods consumer?
Our plagiarism machine is not a plagiarism machine. In fact, it's so much not a plagiarism machine we added an optional feature that lets it detect when its plagiarism is too ovious and make its plagiarism less ovious.
I have a Kubernetes cluster running my AI agents for me so I don't have to learn how to set up AI agents. The AI agents are running my Kubernetes cluster so that I don't have to learn Kubernetes either. I'm paid $250k a year to lie to myself and others that I'm making a positive contribution to society. I don't even know what OS I'm running and at this point I'm afraid to ask.
Tech support workers who may or may not speak English as a second language or with a strong accent can sometimes be of actual help and sometimes not, much like people with possibly more familiar accents can. A call center AI has never been anywhere close to solving a problem I've had.
You're no less fucked but instead of a human being getting underpaid for the trouble, a shitty tech corporation is overpaid.
It's fair enough to criticize that, but the curtains are blue meme makes a really bad argument. It would be one thing if the author said "the curtains are blue because the detective is colorblind and couldn't see the bloodstains on the green curtains" or "the curtains are blue to represent Virgin Mary". Ha ha the teacher was wrong, what a fool, blind leading the blind.
The meme actually implies that authors typically add utterly superfluous sentences in their stories and that it's wrong to try and interpret them as if they're connected to the rest of the story.
The thing about colors is they're so easy and efficient as symbols we don't even consider them as deeper elements of storytelling. The connotations of the colors black and red are so pervasive and intuitive to an English speaker it's hard to even imagine a version of My Immortal that doesn't use them to convey the emo pop mall goffik sense of aethetics associated with the fic.
Nobody living in modern anglophone society, not even someone pretending to write like a concussed 12-year old, would accidentally dress their depressed vampire goth protagonist in yellow, beige and pink thinking those colors usually represent those character traits.
MoreWrite preface: I wanted to get this out of my system and now that I've written it, I'm not sure if I want to post it anywhere else. Due to the sneer-like attitude of it I seem to have ended up writing it with the imagined audience of awful.systems readers, but since it's not really about anything rationalist or techbro adjacent, it's kind of off topic for anywhere on this site except MW. If any of you know a place where this essay might be appreciated, I can consider editing it for publication elsewhere. Most likely I'll just leave it here as a practice piece, though.
I know I could rephrase much of this with shorter sentences and fewer ten-dollar words, but I like to indulge a little: reach for some juicy words to spice up the task of putting thoughts to words. It feels good when writing for the sake of myself, but makes the final product sound pretentious, which is embarrassing, and possibly harder to understand, which should be the main concern but isn't. I don't feel like editing down the indulgence right now, so please be gentle about it.
---
A seemingly genuine invocation of a particularly annoying thought-terminating meme made me think about a great work of contemporary literature occasionally mentionied on this very website: the ostensible Harry Potter fanfic My Immortal by XXXbloodyrists666XXX, alias Tara Gilesbie.
The story begins with the protagonist's self-introduction:
>Hi my name is Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair (that's how I got my name) with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Amy Lee (AN: if u don't know who she is get da hell out of here!).
Let's dive deeper into the hair color specifically. What does the description tell us? The color black carries some very strong connotations in western cultures. It's associated with death, darkness, fear, sorrow and cold. Purple, on the other hand, is a somewhat uncommon color in nature, mostly found among things that have evolved to intentionally stand out, such as flowers signaling to pollinators. Historically its rarity has made it desirable and expensive, even a royal color sometimes only worn by kings and emperors. It's a color of mystique, magic and arcane arts. Red is associated with blood and fire, danger and warnings. It's a color of passion and emotions of love, desire, anger and elation. It's considered an especially strong complement and contrast with black both visually and symbolically.
Ebony Way is a moody teenager obsessed with the dark side of human emotions, who romanticizes death and depression. She's devoted to emo pop (or in her terms, "goffik") bands like My Chemical Romance and Good Charlotte and the fashion associated with the genre. Even among her cohort of witches, wizards, vampires and "preppies" she stands out, simultaneously seeking attention and lamenting the burden of being at the center of it. She often becomes smitten with love and sexual lust, and can be driven to anger and violence. Her hair color is literary shorthand for her entire personality.
This characterization through the colors of Ebony's hair — and soon afterwards, other fashion choices — works on multiple levels. On a surface reading My Immortal is just an exceptionally badly written piece of fiction. The story suffers from an unstructured plot, inconsistent characterization, ignorance of source material, lack of continuity, shaky grammar and chaotic orthography that both overuses deliberate non-standard spelling for an effect and also contains a plethora of non-stylistic misspellings. Despite the numerous faults, the author's use of color symbolism is perfectly fluent and idiomatic. Ebony's hair colors communicate exactly what the author seemingly wants to communicate through them.
Another way of reading the story is as a self-aware parody of bad writing. In this reading, Tara Gilesbie is a caricature of the worst possible fan fiction author. The ur-author maintains the persona of a dreadful writer and deliberately indulges in all the hallmarks of poorly written fanfics. The passage parodies the tendency of self-insert characters to describe their appearance in excessively florid detail to match an idealized version of the writer. The description is misplaced and disproportionately detailed and the author persona's fashion sense is gaudy and juvenile. Ebony's hair color is exactly what Tara-in-kayfabe would consider cool precisely because of the connotations associated with those colors and how they reflect her (misidentified) subculture.
Whether you read My Immortal as failed sincere writing or as ironic metafiction about bad writing, Tara Gilesbie is obviously a terrible writer. The work is disastrously bad on nearly all conventional metrics, but even as a simulacrum of the worst conceivable writer she understands the semiotics of her character's hair color. The choice to specify Ebony's hair color is indisputably a deliberate one and it successfully communicates both how Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way is meant to be seen and how the character herself wants to be seen.
So the next time someone spins a tale of a book saying "the curtains were blue", an English teacher insisting on reading symbolism into the color of the curtains, and the author of the book confirming the passage only means the curtains were blue, remember that the author of My Immortal has a better grasp of color symbolism and conservation of detail than your anti-intellectual interlocutor and the imagined author in the thought experiment.
A tool uses an LLM, the LLM uses a tool. What a beautiful ouroboros.
I don't want to live in the world of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
I don't want to live in the world of The Giving Tree.
I don't want to live in the world of Pippi Longstocking (Sweden).
I want to live in the world of Goosebumps, The Yellow Pages, and JBL Tune Beam Quick Start Guide.
Someone ask if those fucks wanna see how much of the modern world was actually built by China? Wanna let them run it instead?
A tale of a man on the Internet who caught a cold
Based on a true story
Damn, the fever is down and the cough is easing up, but my nose feels like it's lined with sandpaper. What to do? Look it up!
Duck Duck Go: dry sinuses
>Results: >* (Amazon) Dry Nasal Passage – Deals on Dry Nasal Passage [ad] >* (Thrive Market) Banyan Sinus Nasal Drops – Organic Sinus Remedy [ad] >* (Healthline) Dry Sinuses: Inside Nose, Throat, Symptoms, Headache, and More… >* (Medical News Today) Dry sinuses: Remedies, causes, and how to treat them – Medical… >* (Healthline) 5 Effective Ways to Treat a Dry Nose
Alright, I'll take the bottom Healthline link, the one that doesn't look like it had a stroke.
Full screen popup:
># Please accept our privacy terms >Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse ut sapien iaculis, semper velit in, cursus neque. Donec sit amet commodo purus. Donec pretium mauris vel enim convallis semper. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Duis vehicula luctus enim. Praesent fermentum enim ut finibus tristique. Cras eleifend nunc quis fermentum molestie. Donec aliquet faucibus mi non volutpat. Cras ex metus, faucibus non volutpat tempor, sodales non sapien. >* ACCEPT AND CONTINUE TO SITE >* mANagE SEttInGS
manage deez nuts
># Privacy settings >Maecenas in leo leo. Duis quis nulla erat. Pellentesque in tellus vel nisi volutpat sagittis. Etiam tempor sit amet velit nec varius. Vivamus id libero commodo, interdum nisi eu, convallis purus. Pellentesque imperdiet metus mauris, non suscipit quam lobortis ac. Sed molestie eu dui et dapibus. >* DISALLOW ALL >* ALLOW ALL AND CONTINUE TO THE SITE
Are you threatening me with good time? Disallow all.
>You’re seeing this version because you disallowed cookies. {Update your privacy settings.}
># Welcome to our ad-free, tracking-free version of Healthline
>We detect that you are in one of the member countries of the UK/EU/EEA, which is now subject to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Unfortunately, a tracking-free version of our full website is currently unavailable in these countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to even further buttfuck the dignity of people in this market.
>
>While we continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will allow all readers to experience our vampirism content, we are providing you with 10 articles that highlight the breadth and quality of our content, because that's why you're here, right? To read random articles about random medical conditions you didn't fucking ask about? You are on this page because you disallowed the purposes listed in the “How we use your data” section of our Privacy Settings page and don't forget to feel ashamed about it.
Alright, fine, go back. Try the Medical News Today link instead
># Please accept our
Old news, bucko. Manage deez nuts. Disallow all. Oh for the love of…
># Welcome to our ad-free, tracking-free version of Healthline
They're the same fucking site. Alright, maybe this is another of those cases where DDG is easy to SEO game.
Duck Duck Go: dry sinuses !g
I'll just fucking ignore the AI answer before it tells me to eat glue. Oh, the results are the fucking same, but there's a Mayo Clinic in there. I know from experience that one has also cucked itself from the EU. Fine, I'll throw the Healthline link to archive.is
>To verify you're not a robot, please click on tiny pixelated images of fire hydrants for five minutes while an actual robot pretends to know better than you what fire hydrants look like. Doesn't this make you so confident about self-driving cars?
One eternity of downloading later:
># How to treat dry sinuses >Dry sinuses occur when the mucous membranes in your sinuses lack proper moisture. This can lead to dry nasal passages, discomfort, nosebleeds, and similar unpleasant symptoms. >Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur sagittis eros vitae elit vehicula congue. Curabitur pellentesque risus sit amet ipsum vehicula, nec elementum sem iaculis. Mauris fermentum egestas est non tempus. Aenean urna diam, bibendum ac aliquet id, vulputate ut nunc. Ut luctus leo eu lacus consequat vulputate. In consequat augue at cursus tempor. Aenean tristique felis id fermentum tristique. Maecenas fermentum nunc vitae purus efficitur, id malesuada dui elementum. Etiam lobortis viverra turpis eu eleifend. Integer ac efficitur lacus. Nullam rutrum nisl lacus, bibendum maximus turpis vehicula eu. In at turpis lacus. Etiam libero tellus, imperdiet a fringilla non, tincidunt id ligula. Ut sodales convallis mauris sed semper. Nunc laoreet eros eget nulla mollis consectetur. >## What are the symptoms of dry sinuses? >Aliquam sem tellus, interdum non mattis eget, imperdiet nec odio. Duis est mauris, posuere at risus vel, eleifend iaculis tortor. Vivamus in nisi sit amet sapien vestibulum ultricies eu eu ante. Integer eleifend augue mollis, vehicula orci et, condimentum orci. In et ultricies ligula. Praesent vitae lacus neque. Aliquam venenatis aliquam nulla ut dapibus. Integer a ligula a tortor consequat interdum in quis mi. Nam hendrerit mauris vel augue mollis ullamcorper ac ut justo. Curabitur aliquet eros ipsum, sit amet tempus ipsum tincidunt ac. >## What causes dry sinuses? >Ut elementum elementum sapien, et interdum dolor commodo eu. Integer euismod rutrum augue in consectetur. Cras vel ultrices odio, nec congue massa. Proin et congue erat, et feugiat magna. Curabitur blandit vitae ligula sed sollicitudin. Nunc et suscipit quam. Morbi convallis, nisl vel tincidunt tempus, nisi dolor porta tellus, quis rhoncus urna enim vel libero. In iaculis ut elit sed interdum. Aliquam et felis at ante sodales pellentesque non vel diam. Donec consectetur eget metus aliquet gravida. Ut diam ipsum, ornare ac ullamcorper ac, tempus ut tortor. Maecenas dapibus auctor laoreet. Donec varius congue velit, id gravida ex ultricies vitae. Donec scelerisque condimentum erat. Donec auctor lacus sed risus vehicula placerat. >## How are dry sinuses treated? >There are many ways you can treat dry sinuses at home to alleviate discomfort caused by seasonal allergies, irritation from chemicals, or drying from medications or dry air. To get relief, you can: >* place a humidifier in your bedroom at night to keep the air from getting too dry >* stop taking drying medications, such as antihistamines (or ask your doctor or pharmacist to help you choose something with fewer side effects) >* drink plenty of water to stay hydrated get some fresh air if the air in your house is stale or stagnant >* remove as many allergens and irritants from your environment as possible >* irrigate your sinuses with sterile saline using a neti pot or similar product >* use nasal spray to hydrate and lubricate your nasal passages and sinuses >* take a hot shower and inhale the steam >* diffuse essential oils like lavender, peppermint, or lemon for allergies > >In some cases, your doctor might need to recommend treatment for your dry sinuses. Make an appointment with your doctor if you: >* have an autoimmune disorder like Sjögren syndrome >* praesent eget ipsum bibendum turpis blandit vulputate hendrerit quis lorem. >Sed aliquam feugiat bibendum. Pellentesque ornare erat id quam fermentum congue. Proin vitae pretium urna. Nunc tincidunt, lectus id fermentum aliquam, felis justo molestie est, quis viverra erat mauris at nulla. Fusce viverra justo dapibus, venenatis metus at, hendrerit dui. Interdum et malesuada fames ac ante ipsum primis in faucibus. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Fusce eget neque luctus, euismod elit at, finibus erat. Vestibulum semper nunc a enim sagittis tristique. Praesent vestibulum tincidunt ex, eget luctus tortor iaculis et. Maecenas sit amet purus non orci dapibus pellentesque nec vitae lectus.
Alright, take it easy with antihistamines and dig out that nasal spray. Thanks, internet. This definitely needed all these steps to solve.
Edit: archive link to the actual article in case it'll save someone else a couple of minutes
guess where they got their weird trade deficit math from? i went to the pit for y'all and brought back the screenshots with alt text
Now that AI got involved it's on topic for TechTakes I guess. Making a containment thread because there might be a lot to sneer about this.
Boring version of of the main story: https://text.npr.org/nx-s1-5345802
Skynet declares trade war on penguins: https://archive.is/Nn5MC
Reactionary news outlet celebrates 77% drop in stock price by taking everyone else down with them: https://bsky.app/profile/brianmfloyd.bsky.social/post/3lluybov3i22o
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.
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.
>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.
Opera Browser and Opera GX are bloated web browsers, and the company behind them has tried to cover up its controversies.
Also a bunch of somewhat less heinous cringe shit.
We've all been there: the trains you're servicing for a customer suddenly brick themselves and the manufacturer claims that's because you...
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.
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.
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
B-b-but he didn't cite his sources!!
A RISC-V assembly cracking board game. Can't comment on the gameplay experience, but what a cool idea.
Programming language for literate programming law specification - GitHub - CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for literate programming law specification
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
bitofhope @awful.systems Bistable multivibrator
Non-state actor
Tabs for AI indentation, spaces for AI alignment
410,757,864,530 DEAD COMPUTERS