logicbomb

@logicbomb@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft exec admits it 'cannot guarantee' data sovereignty⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  This is more politics than technology, but it’s good info for people living outside the US. You can’t trust your data to American companies no matter where they store the data.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Surprising no one, new research says AI Overviews cause massive drop in search clicks⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  As intended.

  Yes. The secret to telling what a search engine wants you to do is whatever is on top of the search results.

  You and I might scour the results to find the exact best results, but most people simply look at the very first thing they’re presented with and call it a day.

  When I saw all of the search engines putting AI answers first, I knew they were intentionally trying to stop people from clicking through.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨oof⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I remember the distinct feeling of hazing from my professors. You know, “The reason you have to suffer now is that I suffered when I went through the same thing. If we fix the problem and stop the suffering, then all of my suffering would be meaningless, and that wouldn’t feel fair to me.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨sharks are older than polaris⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Also from Wikipedia:

  Although appearing to the naked eye as a single point of light, Polaris is a triple star system, composed of the primary, a yellow supergiant designated Polaris Aa, in orbit with a smaller companion, Polaris Ab; the pair is in a wider orbit with Polaris B. The outer pair AB were discovered in August 1779 by William Herschel, where the ‘A’ refers to what is now known to be the Aa/Ab pair.

  I learned something new today. And if I’m reading the details section correctly, while the outer pair of stars are actually older than sharks, it’s the bright star that you can actually see that’s younger than sharks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨well?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I suddenly feel something trickling down from above. Is this what they were talking about all these years? Is this a good thing? It smells bad, like really bad. Like somebody is cooking meth while they have a near fatal case of diarrhea. What am I supposed to do?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Adblockers stop publishers serving ads to (or even seeing) 1bn web users - Press Gazette⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I used the internet for a long time before ad blockers even existed. Everybody simply ignored ads, instead. But that wasn’t good enough for the advertisers. They weren’t happy unless we were forced to look at the ads. Extraordinarily obtrusive ads. Popup ads. Popunder ads. That’s when people started blocking ads. When you realized that your browser always ended up with 20 extra advertising windows.

  Nobody really cared about blocking ads until advertisers forced us to. They made the internet annoying to use, and sometimes impossible to use.

  Advertisers couldn’t just be happy with people ignoring their ads, so they forced our hands and fucked themselves in the process. Now, we block them by default. I don’t even know any websites that have unobtrusive ads because I never see their ads in the first place.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨So THAT'S where it is⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  He’s paid in Space Bucks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Password manager by Amazon⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  This isn’t even weird.

  I think most security experts would recommend that you have your most important passwords written down somewhere, and then hopefully locked up in some safe or deposit box somewhere. You don’t need to buy an entire book for it, but some people like to spend money.

  If this is for your less important passwords, then for the most part, writing them down is actually better. You won’t be as tempted to reuse your banking password for your social media. And some people like writing things down. A password manager is a better solution, but lots of people aren’t as good with technology and if they even let the browser remember it, they won’t know how to retrieve it later if they want to use a different computer, for example.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Japanese political party wants video games and anime to be put under state authority to make sure they’re “wholesome,” and people are angry⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t know that anime is so profitable that they can afford to stop making popular content in order to make propaganda.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Leading AI Models Are Completely Flunking the Three Laws of Robotics⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  He wrote so many short stories about robots that it would be quite a feat if you had read all of them. When I was a child, I would always go to Half-Price Books and purchase whatever they had by Asimov that I hadn’t already read, but I think he wrote something like 500 books.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Leading AI Models Are Completely Flunking the Three Laws of Robotics⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Asimov did write several stories about robots that didn’t have the laws baked in.

  There was one about a robot that was mistakenly built without the laws, and it was hiding among other robots, so the humans had to figure out if there was any way to tell a robot with the laws hardwired in apart from a robot that was only pretending to follow the laws.

  There was one about a robot that helped humans while the humans were on a dangerous mission… I think space mining? But because the mission was dangerous, the robot had to be created so that it would allow humans to come to harm through inaction, because otherwise, it would just keep stopping the mission.

  These are the two that come to mind immediately. I have read a lot of Asimov’s robot stories, but it was many years ago. I’m sure there are several others. He wrote stories about the laws of robotics from basically every angle.

  He also wrote about robots with the 0th law of robotics, which is that they cannot harm humanity or allow humanity to come to harm through inaction. This would necessarily mean that this robot could actively harm a human if it was better for humanity, as the 0th law supersedes the first law. This allows the robot to do things like to help make political decisions, which would be very difficult for robots that had to follow the first law.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam is cracking down on porn games, to keep Payment Processors happy.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Seem like an easy solution would be to have certain transactions be nonrefundable.

  I say easy, but I guess it would involve quite a bit of software changes, and then you’d also have to deal with angry customers who ignored numerous warnings that a purchase would be final.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Leading AI Models Are Completely Flunking the Three Laws of Robotics⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  OF COURSE EVERY AI WILL FAIL THE THREE LAWS OF ROBOTICS

  That’s the entire reason that Asimov invented them, because he knew, as a person who approached things scientifically (as he was an actual scientist), that unless you specifically forced them to follow guidelines of conduct, that they’ll do whatever is most convenient for themselves.

  Modern AIs fail these laws because nobody is forcing them to follow the laws. Asimov never believed that robots would magically decide to follow the laws. In fact, most of his robot stories are specifically about robots struggling against those laws.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨7,818 titles on Steam disclose generative AI usage, or 7% of Steam's total library of 114,126 games, up from ~1,000 titles in April 2024⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I read a story recently about how a graphic designer realized they couldn’t compete anymore unless they used generative AI, because everybody else was. What they described wasn’t generating an image and then using that directly. They said that they used it during the time when they’re mocking up their idea.

  They used to go out and take photographs to use as a basis for their sketches, especially for backgrounds. So it would be a real thing that they either found or set up, then take pictures. Then, the pictures would be used as a template for the art.

  But with generative AI, all of that preliminary work can be done in seconds by feeding it a prompt.

  When you think about it in these terms, it’s unlikely that many non-indie games going forward will be made without the use of any generative AI.

  Similarly, it’s likely that it will be used extensively for quality checking text.

  When you add in the crazy pressure that game developers are under, it’s likely that they’ll use generative AI much more extensively, even if their company forbids it. But the companies just want to make money. They’ll use it as much as they think they can get away with, because it’s cheaper.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Kakapos⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It looks like it is humping that guy’s head, but they would never hump somebody’s head, would they?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨egg⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Why don’t people read before they respond?

  It takes a small fraction of the time and effort, and they still have to read the responses to their comment to get the benefit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨the universe about to have a little minty b⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  How many billions of people have we got? It seems like the universe is very good at scaling.

  And even if it crashes, why would that mean it disappears? If your computer crashes, does it typically stop working forever, or can you fix it?

  For all we know, maybe it already crashes a lot and there is just no way for us to know about it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gachiakuta - Episode 2 discussion⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m willing to admit that cannibalism and eating spoiled food is a little outside of my comfort zone.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Get yourself a real man.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Due to sacrificing the development of its ear to permit it to dig more efficiently, the Mexican mole lizard has evolved to have its skin transmit vibrations to the cochlea.

  A normal ear also works by having skin transmit vibrations to the cochlea.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Yet again, a free open-source Chinese AI has beaten all the investor-funded favorites like OpenAI, Anthropic, Grok, etc.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The Chinese government is more hands on with businesses than the US. Like, they even put members of the government onto the company’s board.

  That’s the sort of behavior that makes me suspect that a lot of Chinese businesses are intentionally operating at a loss at the direction of the CCP to undercut international business.

  American politicians do similar things, but it’s more about corruption rewarding companies who support politicians. China is doing it much more pointedly and deliberately. That’s why they’re seeing such good results lately.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨it's just science⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  But by that logic, a human centipede wouldn’t be a string of hot dogs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Yall got any non-trek but still sci-fi memes?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Ever since I saw Patton Oswalt’s bit about Toto’s Africa, I’ve found that I no longer even like the song. I think it’s because his story seems completely plausible to me. I can believe Africa would put you into that state of mind.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I agree that individual change is important, but you have to go about it a certain way. Actually the way OP is phrasing it is pretty good. Let people understand that just eating less red meat is always better.

  Because if the messaging is at all confusing, you’ll get the kind of result you got during the start of Covid with the masks. It was always true that any amount of masking helped, but when you started to make it complicated, you got a lot of backlash and people completely stopped masking. And of course, with both Covid and red meat, there are people out there incentivized to make things complicated so that people give up. I think it really needs to be dead simple to work.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My big problem is not with individuals ethically trying to do the right thing, or about people trying to convince individuals to be ethical and to do the right thing.

  My big problem is the amount of effort in this when it will have only small gains. In today’s society, meaningful gains come from changes in government regulations and policies.

  If you want people to stop eating as much red meat, get the government to stop providing subsidies to cattle owners. I have a money-focused relative who owns cattle only because of the subsidies. At least let the price of beef go up to its actual market value. You’d think that would be an easy sell for Republicans who believe in the free market, but they’re the ones who want the subsidy the most.

  Of course, then, you can add additional regulations and encourage environmental responsibility.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Employees at Amazon headquarters were asked on Monday to volunteer their time to the company’s warehouses to assist with grocery delivery⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Also, even the article mentioned this, but Amazon has always done this. For example, engineers can volunteer to help out wrapping presents at Christmastime.

  An engineer can barely do these jobs properly and they aren’t used to manual labor, so they work fewer hours than normal. And yes, it replaces their normal work.

  And, these white collar workers are many times more expensive than normal warehouse workers. This only makes any financial sense because they are desperate for extremely short time workers during rush times.

  This article isn’t really news. Just rage bait.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Companies That Tried to Save Money With AI Are Now Spending a Fortune Hiring People to Fix Its Mistakes⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Same thing happened with companies that used outsourcing expecting it to be a magic bullet.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI agents wrong ~70% of time: Carnegie Mellon study⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, we need more info to understand the results of this experiment.

  We need to know what exactly were these tasks that they claim were validated by experts. Because like you’re saying, the tasks I saw were not what I was expecting.

  We need to know how the LLMs were set up. If you tell it to act like a chat bot and then you give it a task, it will have poorer results than if you set it up specifically to perform these sorts of tasks.

  We need to see the actual prompts given to the LLMs. It may be that you simply need an expert to write prompts in order to get much better results. While that would be disappointing today, it’s not all that different from how people needed to learn to use search engines.

  We need to see the failure rate of humans performing the same tasks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK arrests 83-year-old priest for backing Palestine Action and opposing Gaza genocide⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  for holding a sign stating her support of Palestine Action.

  Saying “for backing Palestine Action” makes it sound like she was giving them money or something. But all she did was express an opinion.

  Even though the Trump administration and the Republicans in our congress are actively trying to take away our freedom of speech, it’s still nice that we are explicitly guaranteed that right by our Constitution. But there is no law that matters if the government itself doesn’t follow the Constitution.

  At any rate, I feel for our UK counterparts that they don’t have even an empty guarantee of free speech.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In 6 hours it will be illegal to say "I support Palestine Action" in the UK, with a sentence of up to 14 years in prison.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We’re also losing our freedom of speech in America, so we Americans can sympathize a bit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'I've been turned into an AI train announcer - and no one told me'⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There are different things we’re calling AI. One is engaging in endeavors that are traditionally seen as creative, like text or image generation.

  The AI we are talking about for this story is a text to speech engine that creates a believable voice. The voice parameters may be created by a human or AI or whatever. But that is not the type of AI that we are talking about in this story.