scubbo

@scubbo@fosstodon.org

Staff SRE at LegalZoom. He/him.

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Crell, to LLMs
@Crell@phpc.social avatar

, even generative LLMs, doesn’t create new things. It just remixes at a phenomenal rate. High-output remixing tends to produce low-quality output, with occasional gems. So on net, they increase the ratio of low-quality garbage to gems. That’s all they can do. And that just gums up the works of, well, everything.

Generative AI, in its current trajectory, cannot be anything but a net-negative for society. But it is a great grift to rip off investors.

scubbo,

@Crell you know I'm in strong agreement with your general stance on AI, but I have to take issue with the claim (easily-removable without changing the sense of the overall post) that "just remixing" is not creation. All creative work springs from prior influences, whether deliberately or not - an LLM's process of doing so is merely a little more direct than a human's.

Nifflas, (edited ) to random
@Nifflas@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

If one were to take a variable, start at zero, and repeatedly add a random number to it (assume true randomness exists, the value is random from -1 to 10, and re-rolled every iteration)

If this process runs literally forever, would the number ever be either likely (edit: if your answer is that it's guaranteed, answer Yes) to reach 0 or lower again?

scubbo,

@Nifflas I think this depends on your definition of "likely"?

It will return to 0 - infinitely many times. But the proportion of 0-valued steps among all steps will trend to zero real fast.

scubbo,

@Nifflas hmm - having seen other analyses in the thread, I"m now doubting my initial thoughts. Thanks for asking an interesting question!

scubbo, to random

Big fan of the ambiguity in this headline.

aral, to random
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

Democracy is when you don’t criticise the guy arming a genocide because the rapist might win again.

scubbo,

@aral I hear and support your point - but to imply that Trump's most harmful or most important attribute is "being a rapist" is the biggest strawman I've ever seen.

Nifflas, (edited ) to random
@Nifflas@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

Best superpower? Let's change something about programming!

A: Bracket swap! { is ended by ], [ by ), and ( by }
B: Indentation is a syntax error, and also not supported by any IDE
C: All arrays uses 2 based indexing, 1 is subtracted for each next item (i.e. 2, 1, 0, -1, -2, -3...)
D: Version control is no longer a thing

No attempt to sidestep the decision will work. It is a superpower after all.

scubbo,

@Nifflas given that you explicitly said that indentation isn't supported by an IDE, can we assume that the bracket-swap would be? Don't know if it counts as sidestepping to argue that simultaneously removing "bracket autocompletion" functionality as well is a whole other thing.

scubbo,

@Nifflas I think I type close parents/brackets/braces/whatever about 10% as often as I do their opening counterparts.

beka_valentine, to random

trying using my Quest 2 for the first time in like a year or two and facebook wont let me log in because of some security shit

listen motherfuckers my password is long as hell and ive typed it once already let me fucking log in, for fucks sake

facebook actively discourages security in the name of security, and i want to smash this device because its unmitigated trash. everyone involved in it should be ashamed of what they've produced. this is garbage and you're garbage

scubbo,

@beka_valentine define "obnoxiously expensive"? PS VR bundles seem to be going for about $200, but you could probably get the headset itself for significantly cheaper if you look around.

scubbo, to random

Sometimes, the clickbait works. I simply must know more.

gsuberland, to random
@gsuberland@chaos.social avatar

adventure time is so good

scubbo,

@gsuberland a cartoon? Isn't that for kids!? 😂

What an underrated show. And I say that fully aware of how much those of us who love it, love it.

scubbo,

@gsuberland oooh, you are the first other person I've encountered who knows Tuca & Bertie! So many great shows on that list.

A bit leftfield, but since our tastes align so much - you might enjoy Primal.

thomasfuchs, to random
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io avatar

Fascinated by completely oblivious people who proudly announce their “new substack”

scubbo,

@thomasfuchs a reminder that what is big visible news in our circles can barely make a ripple outside of them!

ct_bergstrom, to random

This is a fantastic story about how the search engine tail wags the online content dog.

It's a form of enshittification, but it's a two-sided one that involves google's algorithmic choices and web designers' responses via Campbell's law (when a metric becomes a target, people do stupid shit)

https://www.theverge.com/c/23998379/google-search-seo-algorithm-webpage-optimization

scubbo,

@xahteiwi helpful, thanks! I only knew it as Goodhart's Law.

scubbo, to random

Despite being utterly nonsensical most of the time, the American date format does have some aesthetic appeal today. 12/31/23 is quite pleasing.

(I'll return to ISO 8601 purism tomorrow)

georgetakei, to random

I am the son of an immigrant.

scubbo,

@nuncio it's a terrible slogan, because, although it's true, it's prone to misinterpretation which pushes fence-sitters to the opposing side.

It doesn't really mean "every action by every person employed as a cop is a bastardly action". It means "the profession of 'cop' upholds and reinforces white supremacy, capitalism, & other harmful dynamics. Bad cops outnumber 'good' cops, who do not act to curtail the bad ones. 'Cop' is a net-harmful profession - by choosing it, you do harm".

scubbo, to random

TIL that "Etsy" is not a phonetic spelling of a mispronunciation of "etc", but is in fact a nonsense word allegedly inspired by the sounds of "oh, yes", "what if", and "just because" in Italian, French, and Greek respectively.

the_etrain, to random
@the_etrain@beige.party avatar

That whole thing in the Bible about passing a camel through the eye of a needle doesn't mean what you think it does because back then sewing needles were 45 feet tall.

scubbo,

@the_etrain you joke, but I have heard straight-faced attempts to explain the translation as referring to a particular strength/thickness of nautical rope idiomatically referred to as a "camel", and "needle" as a tying post.

Which would make the whole phrase nonsensical in context as a comparison with "a difficult thing", but no-one ever accused religious folks of being over-concerned with internal consistency.

mattblaze, to random
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

I get the impression that the same people telling me that I should be happy iPhones don't have physical SIM slots are the same people who told me I should be happy they took away the headphone jack.

scubbo,

@ninavizz is there an accessibility reason to prefer corded headphones?

If not, this is like claiming that you're being gouged because 8-track players are rare & expensive. Technology moves on - it is both socially optimal and economically sensible for manufacturers to focus on recent developments, and for hobbyists to pay a premium for archaic tech.

(If there is, then this argument is moot, but I've never heard one - just a reflavoured "I don't want to be forced to change")

stfn, to random
@stfn@fosstodon.org avatar

I spent the while morning trying to setup a kubernetes cluster on two raspberry pis and I have failed so far. Every step from the docs resulted in errors and I'm tired and angry

scubbo,

@stfn definitely recommend k3s, worked great for me! Happy to answer any questions you may have, though can't promise I will know the answer. My startup scripts are at https://github.com/scubbo/pi-tools

scubbo,

@stfn damn, my "Greek letters" feel distinctly uncool now!

scubbo, to random

...you've been down too long in the midnight sea

devinprater, to accessibility

It's 2025. We finally have 7 Assistive Technology Trainers. Five of them are AI. One human is for screen reader users, and one human is for magnification users. We even have a course writer. Oh, it's an AI too. We have a media editor trainer. Yeah, that's an AI too. We even have a web and document accessibility analyst. Yep, AI.

It's so nice now, not having to do so much on my own. I mean, well, we humans still here joke that the AI staff are taking a day off when the OpenAI servers faulter or crash. But the coolest part is, our organization only has to pay the enterprise fee, and we get as much staff as we want.

Oh hey, hang on, I need to take this call. One of our students needs help with something. "Assistive Technology, this is Devin. Yeah, I have time; what's going on? Okay, lesson 10? The AI said what now? No, no, just arrow to the word and hit the applications key; you don't need to do anything complicated yet. Yeah, I know. But we don't have the budget for any real people, so we use GPT as kinda the front line. Yeah, that's how it is, I'm sorry. Okay, let me know if you have anything else you need. Yeah, you have a great day too, and we'll see you tomorrow."

Yeah, that kind of thing happens sometimes. But like I told them, we can't hire anyone else. And we have way too much we need to do. So in order for me to not break down and quit, we made some GPT's and hooked them up to the AI Worker system, with memory and phone line, that just came out a few months ago. It's easier now. But sometimes I wonder what wrong info students get from these bots. I mean, I know in 2024 the NFB made OpenAI make their site accessible and train on blindness texts, but you never know. I always have to tell them about the new NVDA settings panel released in 2024.3, or the new features in JAWS 2025. But I finally have time to do other stuff, like learn new AT, or go to college, and our 500 AT students do fine for the most part. I hope.

scubbo,

@bgtlover @devinprater yeah, I was gonna say - this seems positively optimistic!

yakkoj, to random
@yakkoj@fosstodon.org avatar

ARGH

Outlook, you stupid-default-having thing. NO ONE in the history of making recurring events wants one that ends after an arbitrary date that's 3 months into the future. NO ONE goes there to set up a weekly recurring event that ends after 25 occurrences

I can guarantee you they want DAILY recurrence that end after a small number of weekdays.

This has been a problem as long as Outlook has existed.

scubbo,

@yakkoj I feel like I'm misunderstanding you, here, because weekly recurrences are way more common for me than daily.

Agree that the default period should be "infinite", not "finite", though. Much better to notice a no-longer-needed recurrence and delete it, than to not notice a silently-ending recurrence.

scubbo,

@yakkoj agreed re: recurring meetings sensible defaults!

For PTO - does Outlook allow setting multi-day-spanning all-day events? That may work better!

LadyDragonfly, to random

There's a concerted effort on the far right to rebrand bigotry as "political differences". Here are some things that are legitimate political differences:

  • Disagreement on what should be the maximum build height for this neighborhood
  • Disagreement on whether there should be another tax levee to pay for additional school funding and buy your county new school buses
  • Disagreement over how the new development downtown should be zoned, either fully residential or business/residential mixed.

Here are a few things that are NOT "political differences"

  • Disagreement on whether or not black people count as people
  • Disagreement over whether gay people should be electrocuted to try to make them straight
  • Disagreement over whether immigrants deserve basic human rights

These aren't disagreements over politics. They're fundamental differences in morality. And yes, they're valid things to end a friendship over.

scubbo,

@Matt5sean3 for some people, politics has taken on the meaning of "choices on which there can be reasonable disagreement", rather than "choices relevant to how we govern ourselves and coexist".

The points listed are (IMO) political ones. They are points on which the decent, humane, non-evil choice is clear - and politics is one method (along with other, less polite, more direct avenues) by which decent people bring them about.

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