ErmahgherdDavid

@ErmahgherdDavid@lemmy.dbzer0.com

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hundreds of public figures, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Virgin’s Richard Branson urge AI ‘superintelligence’ ban⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Relative privation is when someone dismisses or minimizes a problem simply because worse problems exist: “You can’t complain about X when Y exists.”

  I’m talking about the practical reality that you must prioritize among legitimate problems. If you’re marooned at sea in a sinking ship you need to repair the hull before you try to fix the engines in order to get home.

  It’s perfectly valid to say “I can’t focus on everything so I will focus on the things that tangibly impact us over hypothetical things that may impact us”. It’s fallacious to say “Because worse things exist, AGI concerns doesn’t matter.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hundreds of public figures, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Virgin’s Richard Branson urge AI ‘superintelligence’ ban⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Here’s how I see it: we live in an attention economy where every initiative with a slew of celebrities attached to it is competing for eyeballs and buy in. It adds to information fatigue and analysis paralysis . Also in a very real sense if we are debating AGI we are not debating the other stuff. There are only so many hours in a day.

  If you take the position that AGI is basically not possible or at least many decades away (I have a background in NLP/AI/LLMs and I take this view - not that it’s relevant in the broader context of my comment) then it makes sense to tell people to focus on solving more pressing issues e.g. nascent fascism, climate collapse, late stage capitalism etc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientists have been studying remote work for four years and have reached a very clear conclusion: “Working from home makes us thrive”⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  …Right?

  “This article is supported by verified sources and supported by editorial technology”

  Cool… So if those sources are verified you won’t mind sharing them with me?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft just changed where your Word documents live — here’s why it matters⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Presumably it’s selling snake oil and convincing people to trust them?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Keep scrolling, guys⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Stupid sexy pipes

  cartoon still of Homer Simpson thinking about Ned Flanders in ski gear

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Discord customer service data breach leaks user info and scanned photo IDs⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In the United Kingdom yes because of our authoritarian Online Safety Act that came into power earlier this year. If I join a discord channel marked as nsfw I get a prompt for id which I bypass with a VPN in another country.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube will start using AI to guess your age.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My Gmail account is old enough to buy drinks in a bar in the US (21)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Come back to this post in 2030's⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You’ve seen how much evidence there is that the earth is spherical and that germs are real right? Just because information is recorded doesn’t mean it will be trusted. Anything they like is true, anything they dislike is “fake news”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft still can't convince folks to upgrade to Windows 11⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  At the lower end of the budget you could consider libreboot - it’s a one person band who ships refurbished Lenovo thinkpads with Linux pre-installed

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Just a little bit more⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Working as intended! POSIWID in action

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK Official Calls for Age Verification on VPNs to Prevent Porn Loophole⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In the UK we already have a law where isps block porn by default (blacklisting) the person who took out the contract (who has to be 18 or older because they signed legal contract) can contact the isp and ask them to opt out of these blocks. That’s been a thing for about 10 years. You can own a Pay-as-you-go sim as a minor but you have to send government id to prove you are over 18 to get the adult content filtering turned off.

  That’s one of the things that made it clear to me that the new law is an authoritarian data mining operatiok and blatant power grab. Like… We already have these tools in place. If you don’t want your kid accessing porn, don’t opt out of the filters provided by your isp.

  You could argue that putting the onus on the platform is more effective at “protecting kids” than having the isps maintain blacklists but there will always be small sites that don’t comply and enterprising kids who find a way around any block. Just like the law requires you to be 18 to buy alcohol or tobacco here but there are always dodgy shops who sell tobacco to underage kids. There are brothers, uncles or heck just straight up parents willing to buy cigarettes and alcohol for underage teens.

  This was never about protecting the children. That was the Trojan horse used to justify these laws to the technically uninformed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨OpenAI will not disclose GPT-5’s energy use. It could be higher than past models⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I can’t imagine any sane person who lives their life guided by marketing hype instead of direct knowledge and experience.

  I mean fair enough but also… That makes the vast majority of managers, MBAs, salespeople and “normies” like your grandma and Uncle Bob insane.

  Actually questioning stuff that sales people tell you and using critical thinking is a pretty rare skill in this day and age.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What a shocker!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Hey, business is business. You use a gun, I use a fountain pen what’s the difference? Let’s put it in my terms: you’re in a hostile takeover, you snatch us up for some green mail, but you’re not expecting some poison pill to be running around the building, am I right? Hans, bubby, I’m your white knight.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨So glad I suck dick⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The thing OOP is sick of is people censoring mild swears like bitch in their screenshots. The content of the pic is unrelated

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How it feels using TOR as a Brit rn 🤘⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They have ruled out banning vpns for now but that’s not to say that they won’t just U-turn or that whoever gets in next won’t ban them.

  The UK’s Trump whose party is currently the most popular in the UK and may win the next election (I hate this) has pledged to repeal this law but he’s well known for making promises he has no intention of keeping and this law is very convenient as a means of censorship.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK households could face VPN 'ban' after use skyrockets following Online Safety Bill⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They know. The “think of the children” angle is just cover to enrage the tabloid readers and to be used as a straw man against anyone criticisng the law (“you’re a pedophile”). The real purpose is “let’s enumerate the IDs of everyone who uses the internet for anything we don’t like” and “let’s censor anything we don’t like starting with LGBTQ content”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Brits can get around Discord's age verification thanks to Death Stranding's photo mode, bypassing the measure introduced with the UK's Online Safety Act. We tried it and it works—thanks, Kojima⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  My entire lived experience as a software engineer for the last 15 years has been being ignored by the non-exprerts in charge. It goes like this:

  MBA: I want to solve this problem using this solution

  Me: that won’t solve the problem well, how about-

  MBA: I don’t care for the laws of reality. Do it my way [or find another job]!

  They say they want our expertise but really they want validation of their own terrible ideas and they think coercing experts with threats of unemployment is as valuable as actually listening to those experts.

  This applies as much to the public sector and the absolute clowns we vote in to govern us as it does to the private sector where the clowns hold the purse strings. Frankly it makes me want to give up the subject I have a PhD in and grow potatoes on a remote island somewhere.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Adblockers stop publishers serving ads to (or even seeing) 1bn web users - Press Gazette⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  From banksy’s limited run “Cut it out” book apparently. Yours for only £310

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dear Big Tech, Stop Shoving AI Into Operating Systems⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They will just instruct everyone to throw their obsolete AI pc onto the landfill like they already have been doing with machines that won’t run windows 11