Occasionally I turn off my ad blocking to see how things are "supposed" to look... and holy shit how does anyone put up with that shit? :barf:
Remote
Generic Person
@genericperson@hachyderm.io
mastodon 4.7.3Long time open source advocate with interests in cybersecurity, RF stuff, music, privacy, reading, and sci fi. I play several musical instruments as well.
Once appeared on the Mitch Albom show live. Was onstage with B. B. King in utero (not his).
Opinions my own. Here for friends, not for politics or clout. Follows on approval so my count is low on purpose. I *do not consent* to having my content scraped, used for AI training, or for search
16 Followers
23 Following
30 Posts
Joined May 13, 2025
pronouns:
he/him
Replying to
I'm not even anti-technology. I just don't see all this being built for the benefit of humanity.
If you (with proof) told me that the end goal of AI was making Universal Basic Income a thing and help people become more informed and educated, I'd be on board.
Maybe there could be some guard rails about stealing creative work and not destroying the environment.
"A turnip cures Elvis"
Thus begins what is (imo) one of the best hacker movies of all times: Sneakers
Apologies, @thegibson@masto.hackers.town
This is my last week at my job. I have worked there for three years and four months.
I was recently shifted to a different group. The company's focus has become AI first. We are being required to use AI tooling. We are hosting AI companies you've heard of.
Meanwhile, people are losing their jobs. AI isn't about helping people. It isn't about solving real problems we need solved like the environment, energy, inequality, or war. If anything, it's making all those problems worse.
I don't have a job lined up. I don't know if I'll go back into a IT / System Engineer role ever again. Especially not if it's AI focused or (more likely) the bean counters think AI can replace those kind of roles.
I got into technology because I truly believed it was about making things better for humans. This doesn't seem to be true anymore.
I'm sad, but at least I feel like I've made a correct decision ethically.
Replying to on wandering.shop
@annaleen@wandering.shop @charliejane@wandering.shop I already own a few of these and this is *still* an amazing deal. Thank you so much!!!
@cbleslie@hachyderm.io "It was Biden's fault!"
Me, a few days ago: What I love about Angine de Poitrine is that their tonality and time signatures are so odd, I'll never get them stuck in my head.
Me, today (after days with two of their tunes jammed in my brain): Holy shit my brain is still trying to figure out what to do with those notes.
Watching Attack of the Clones and listening to Darth Incel deliver creepy lines to Padme.
I'm "dinner at Applebee's" down today.
Replying to
I just don't see this as being a technology that's being used for the betterment of man or the world. That makes me incredibly sad.
Replying to
@bedirthan you know, a cozy rpg sounds pretty awesome to me right about now.
"Roll 1d20 for time spent petting your doggo."
Tonight's question on top of mind is how to be open, as in open source, free as in liberty, without feeding a training model that will be the demise of that community.
Here's a question for everyone posting their takes, usually "against", on LLM/AI here?
Who are you trying to convince?
Who do you think is actually listening?
Do you think you're informing anyone?
Someone (maybe a human?) sent me a follow request on an alt. The stuff of theirs I read to do a little "recon" verged on unreadable and set off my bullshit detectors. There were so many big 'ol obscure words strung together that it turned into semantic noise.
I was immediately reminded of the "Inkhorn Controversy" in the 16/17th century. People were bringing in words to make English sound more smarter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkhorn_term
But seriously, either a bot or total head-up-ass academia.
@fluidlogic Vic 20, C64, C128, PC 8088/8086, Atari 1040ST
Apple IIe if you count the computers at school.
Replying to
This is vague because:
- there's no value in calling out who inspired it and
- it's true to any situation it applies to
It's offered at least in part to help people realize it's better to work on yourself than get mired in stupid Internet blame games.
Replying to
One of the first things that needs to go is this concept of infinite growth. We are already using more resources in a year than the planet can produce. We don't need our productivity increased so that we can do more in less time. We need more time to fix the intractable problems that humanity faces.
How about we use AI to solve the problems of resource scarcity and climate change. How about we use AI to, where wanted, replace jobs that people don't want AND take the dividends from that and put it towards UBI or education?
What if we started dreaming instead of veering sharply into a technodystopian feudal system where we're all giving our best to big tech and the billionaire class?
What if we didn't have to sit through conference calls where CEOs field questions about burnout and say "if you don't like the pace, quit." and were met with empathy and given tools to make the job easier?
Replying to
I also don't think the problem is as insurmountable as the blacksmith/aerospace analogy makes it out to be - I could certainly get up to speed. The problem really becomes what I call a Jurassic Park kind of problem - we've spent a lot of time thinking about if we can do AI, but not enough time asking if we SHOULD.
What I keep coming back to in all of this is this... Is AI being used to:
- Build humanity up
- Enrich our knowledge
- Save our planet
- Solve inequality and suffering
What I see happening is:
- People are being replaced, wages are being stolen
- People are losing their critical reasoning skills. Disinformation and/or hallucinated propaganda are now automated
- We're increasing energy usage, heat production, and pollution that
- Is being used to build tools that make rich people richer, automate warfare, destroy art, and generally increase the divides both real and digital.
It's an awful situation and it comes down to a lot of ethical considerations. I don't see a lot of options where I can maintain a living and most importantly (I'm in the US) decent health insurance without either putting up with some serious ethical compromises or taking a huge risk and changing careers
Just your normal night of nightmares about drowning in a deluge caused by climate change. :blobfoxfacepalm:
I think that everyone should try to play Go / Baduk and get an idea of the principles of strategy that it teaches in microcosm.
One of the principles that translates from Go and Aikido is the concept of not being where the strike is landing.
This is why you do not find me on all but one mainstream social media. This is why I have removed my streamers and avoid buying books (or anything) on Amazon.
The best kind of resistance that anyone can enact is being inscrutable. Live in the long tail, and be agile.
If you told me all of the Star Wars movies existed to provide a context to make Andor a powerful series, I'd accept that. I'd even go so far as to say it would make Episodes I and IX forgivable.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_(King_James)/Matthew#26:52
Look, I'm just quoting the bible here.
🙄
Angine de Poitrine.
Look them up if your don't know them. They've completely blown my mind. I have a new appreciation for music and human creativity.
Replying to
@astronomerritt@hachyderm.io I do not disagree with your intention here whatsoever. I have, when using alternative names like you mention in the past, done this to avoid adding to the already overlarge word cloud for politicians who clearly hold by the adage, "There's no such thing as bad press." People of this ilk thrive on attention, positive or negative.
However, I did not consider that a word filter would be bypassed. When I post about politics I do tend to CW and tag, so hopefully that has mitigated some of the harm.
My overarching solution has been to just not talk about them at all. I refuse to let bad actors suck the oxygen out of the room.