this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2024
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TechTakes

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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

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Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

Last week's thread

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this - this one was a bit late, I got distracted)

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[–] khalid_salad@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

is biometric "gait analysis" total bullshit? it feels like total bullshit, but I only DuckDuckWent for 20 seconds or so, idk

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 14 points 1 day ago (10 children)

currently in vc delusion, the public just doesn’t understand how to move about efficiently

the levels of not-even-wrong from these dipshits continue to be astounding

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[–] maol@awful.systems 20 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Eugenics in action:

Danish parenting tests under fire after baby removed from Greenlandic mother

Psychometric tests are widely used in Denmark as part of child protection investigations into new parents, and have long been criticised by human rights bodies as culturally unsuitable for Greenlandic people and other minorities.

In a 2022 report, the institute said that because the tests were not adapted to take cultural differences into account, Greenlandic parents ran “the risk of obtaining low test scores, so that it is concluded, for example, that they have reduced cognitive abilities, without there being actual evidence for this."

Psychological assessments of her were made by a Danish-speaking psychologist. Kronvold, whose first language is Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic), is not fluent in Danish.

[–] slopjockey@awful.systems 15 points 1 day ago

Oh man that is so grim

Kronvold, 38, was given an FKU test in 2014 before the birth of her second child, a boy, and again recently while pregnant with her third child. Speaking through an intermediary, she told the Guardian that on this last occasion she was told it was to see if she was “civilised enough”.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 11 points 1 day ago

billy spears got it right. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I woke up and immediately read about something called "Defense Llama". The horrors are never ceasing: https://theintercept.com/2024/11/24/defense-llama-meta-military/

Scale AI advertised their chatbot as being able to:

apply the power of generative AI to their unique use cases, such as planning military or intelligence operations and understanding adversary vulnerabilities

However their marketing material, as is tradition, include an example of terrible advice. Which is not great given it's about blowing up a building "while minimizing collateral damage".

Scale AI's response to the news pointing this out -- complaining that everyone took their murderbot marketing material seriously:

The claim that a response from a hypothetical website example represents what actually comes from a deployed, fine-tuned LLM that is trained on relevant materials for an end user is ridiculous.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 13 points 1 day ago (2 children)

On the one hand, that spectacular failure could potentially dissuade the military from buying in and prolonging this bubble. On the other hand, having an accountability sink for war crimes would be a tempting offer to your average army.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I’ve been wondering about this

One the one hand, military procurement (at least afaik) tends toward complete functional product

On the other hand, military R&D programs have been among the most spectacularly profligate financial black holes in recent decades

None of the options involved feel great, even if “it gets shunted from mil procurement and all industry claims get publicly brandished as the bullshit it is” comes to pass (which tbh still feels like an optimistic outcome, with unclear time horizons)

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I mean it fits into the pattern of procurement projects that aren't allowed to fail despite having had serious coherence issues starting at the design stage. Though the military is usually less prone to the "problem in search of a solution" dynamic that VCs are prone to if a project gets started it can shamble forwards as a zombie for years before anyone finds the political will to kill it.

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[–] dgerard@awful.systems 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Software licensing is notoriously labyrinthine, so resources like the site Microsoft will close – Get Licensing Ready – can be very handy. Today, the site offers over 50 training modules plus documentation.

I'm sorry, mister MSFT, why did you cause there to be more educational content about your stupid licenses than there is for theoretical physics in an undergrad programme, have you ever considered that it's time to stop? Get some help?

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[–] ibt3321@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 1 day ago (2 children)

My organic chemistry professor used ChatGPT to write a lab procedure. My other chemistry professor's daughter is VP of AI at Microsoft. AAAAA

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

do you have it? i'm in this field and i wonder how badly it fucked up

[–] ibt3321@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 1 day ago (6 children)
[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

there are two incredible footguns in there, both of which can be trivially avoided

[–] aio@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Wait I know nothing about chemistry but I'm curious now, what are the footguns?

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/footgun

i'll pick up handbook for a similar course that i was TA for and i'll take it apart Soon™

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[–] istewart@awful.systems 16 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Two posts in two weeks about professors using ChatGPT has me questioning my desire to go back to school

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[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 17 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Starting things off with a fresh post from Brian Merchant: Tech under Trump, part 1

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[–] saucerwizard@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 1 day ago (3 children)

i've been there for few days for conference once and it does look at least like a nice place to visit with no obvious glaring problems to be seen. walkable, organized, you can get around without a car np, doesn't seem to be extremely expensive but again, i haven't been there for a long time. it's like you took nicer parts of Warsaw, slapped a port next to it and cooled down a few degrees

unless you're talking about that EA techbro billionaire, then i've got no idea

looking to move?

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