DawnPaladin's recent activity

  1. Comment on Things progressives get wrong in ~society

    DawnPaladin
    Link Parent
    Trump's policy is probably going to put us into a recession. They're cheering now, but wait for the chickens to come home to roost. If he tanks the economy it will be much more difficult for him...

    Republican voters are cheering for a billionaire who's stripmining the country at their own expense. So, so many of those struggling people voted for the party who'll make their struggles infinitely worse rather than the one who, admittedly, probably would've kept them roughly the same. I hope you're right that the message can get through, I truly do, but I don't believe it.

    Trump's policy is probably going to put us into a recession. They're cheering now, but wait for the chickens to come home to roost. If he tanks the economy it will be much more difficult for him to get reelected, even when he tries to cheat.

    2 votes

  2. Comment on FOSS infrastructure is under attack by AI companies in ~tech

    DawnPaladin
    Link
    This is bad. Looks like scraping websites for LLMs is the new email spam: a parasitic way to make money by externalizing costs. We "solved" the email spam problem mostly by centralizing around a...

    This is bad. Looks like scraping websites for LLMs is the new email spam: a parasitic way to make money by externalizing costs. We "solved" the email spam problem mostly by centralizing around a few big email services that bear the costs of spam filtering. These days it's very difficult to run your own small email server. I hope that doesn't happen to hosting.

    It's not clear to me whether OpenAI and Anthropic are actually behind this massive surge. Both of them claim to respect robots.txt. They could be lying, but the user-agent strings identifying these scrapers are commonly faked. Browsers do it all the time--Chrome starts its user strings with "Mozilla/5.0" to this day for historical reasons. It would be very easy for smaller companies to impersonate OpenAI and Anthropic here. But we don't know.

    Crossposting this to OpenAI's developer forum. Maybe it will get some traction there.

    7 votes

  3. Comment on BYD unveils new super-charging EV tech, to build charging network in China in ~transport

    DawnPaladin
    Link
    About a year ago Electrek wrote a fiery editorial excoriating American car manufacturers, because the car industry was lobbying the US government to roll back the climate/efficiency/emissions...

    About a year ago Electrek wrote a fiery editorial excoriating American car manufacturers, because the car industry was lobbying the US government to roll back the climate/efficiency/emissions standards. "Making EVs is too haaaaard", said the car industry. "Americans don't want EVs!"

    "Shut up, whiners," said Electrek. "You are lobbying for your own destruction. If you don't build cheap, good-quality EVs, China will. If you rest on your laurels and postpone EV development, you are going to cede the entire market to China. The day is coming sooner than you think that selling combustion-engine cars is going to be like selling film cameras. Put down the dinosaur juice and get to work."

    I'm starting to think they had a point.

    25 votes

  4. Comment on Why is it so hard engage people about indirect effects? in ~talk

    DawnPaladin
    Link Parent
    Thanks! Sorry about your friend, and I hope you found a laptop you liked.

    Thanks! Sorry about your friend, and I hope you found a laptop you liked.

    1 vote

  5. Comment on Why is it so hard engage people about indirect effects? in ~talk

    DawnPaladin
    Link
    Buckminster Fuller was known to say "I find people only listen to you when they ask you to talk to them." I've gotten my family members to switch to Firefox, because I've provided a huge amount of...

    Buckminster Fuller was known to say "I find people only listen to you when they ask you to talk to them." I've gotten my family members to switch to Firefox, because I've provided a huge amount of computer help to them over the years and am known as a computer guy. They think of me as a nice, helpful person who knows what he's talking about, so they're willing to take my advice.

    I do not expect I would be able to have some random person on the street or on the Internet take my advice. I also don't think I could persuade my family to switch to Linux unless I could very clearly demonstrate that the benefit to them personally would be worth the learning curve. Doing stuff "for the greater good" is great until the third time it annoys you personally.

    28 votes

  6. Comment on I used to teach students. Now I catch ChatGPT cheats. in ~tech

    DawnPaladin
    Link Parent
    It is lovely to talk with someone who's engaging this topic with curiosity! I am not an educator, so I apologize in advance for any misunderstandings of academia I commit here. I would not want...

    It is lovely to talk with someone who's engaging this topic with curiosity! I am not an educator, so I apologize in advance for any misunderstandings of academia I commit here.

    I guess my concern more so stems from the critical thinking and reading skills that library / online database research provides, as well as the argumentative processes involved in creating an argumentative essay. If we really have to shift away from traditional essay writing, how do educators preserve the skills developed from writing and research?

    I would not want people to stop using libraries and online research to write essays. I don't want essays to go away. We just have to figure out some new techniques for grading. Handing in the essay for the professor to grade in isolation isn't going to work any more.

    I think your idea to do seminars is a really good one—those are exactly the same lines I'm thinking along. So how do we incorporate essay writing into that plan? Maybe something like this:

    1. Teacher assigns a seminar. Students decide on a research topic.
    2. As prep for the seminar, over the course of several weeks, each student does a bunch of research. Every week or two, they summarize their current research in an essay. These essays are easy to auto-generate, so they're not worth much of your grade. Mainly they serve as a series of checkpoints—they give the student a chance to discuss their research progress with the teacher. They provide those prone to procrastination with intermediate deadlines so they don't wind up doing the entire research project over 48 hours.
    3. Students present their seminar. The teacher and class ask them questions to test the depth of their knowledge. This is the bulk of their grade.

    Another idea would be to have students write essays arguing one side or another of various topics, worth a small amount of grade. Then after X rounds of back-and-forth, host a live debate in class. Grade students based on how well they know their own arguments and the arguments of their opponents.

    Do you think either of these would work? The general pattern I'm going for here is that essays are easy to cheat on, we know this and accept it, and the rubric is designed with this in mind. The essays are not assigned for their own sake—they are stairsteps to get you over a wall that's looming at the end of the semester. Students who want to learn and who engage with the material will finish the semester with a big, cool project they can show off. Students who are checked out and coasting will hit the wall and fail; hopefully they'll learn from the experience and do better next time.

    2 votes

  7. Comment on I used to teach students. Now I catch ChatGPT cheats. in ~tech

    DawnPaladin
    Link Parent
    100% agree! This is the difference between using LLMs as a tool/tutor/assistant vs trying to have it do the entire job for you. Academic settings should be encouraging the former and punishing the...

    100% agree! This is the difference between using LLMs as a tool/tutor/assistant vs trying to have it do the entire job for you. Academic settings should be encouraging the former and punishing the latter, IMO.

    2 votes

  8. Comment on I used to teach students. Now I catch ChatGPT cheats. in ~tech

    DawnPaladin
    Link Parent
    I disagree. I was studying math yesterday, watching a Khan Academy video about complex numbers. The whole concept of what they were doing seemed completely arbitrary and disconnected from reality....

    I disagree. I was studying math yesterday, watching a Khan Academy video about complex numbers. The whole concept of what they were doing seemed completely arbitrary and disconnected from reality. I asked ChatGPT for background, and it explained the historical context of complex numbers and gave me a bunch of useful information that filled in big gaps in my understanding. I've checked the stuff it gave me; it's real. This is far from the only time this sort of thing has happened.

    You are acting as if LLMs produce nothing but lies and garbage, and that just isn't so. They are not perfect, but they are useful research tools, and ignoring them is folly.

    12 votes

  9. Comment on I used to teach students. Now I catch ChatGPT cheats. in ~tech

    DawnPaladin
    Link Parent
    Agreed with a lot of this. The paper you linked is based on GPT-3, which is very old; newer models need much less prompt engineering. You can just talk to them. I think students who want to figure...

    Agreed with a lot of this. The paper you linked is based on GPT-3, which is very old; newer models need much less prompt engineering. You can just talk to them. I think students who want to figure out how to use these tools to learn instead of using them to cheat will find it straightforward to do so.

    13 votes

  10. Comment on I used to teach students. Now I catch ChatGPT cheats. in ~tech

    DawnPaladin
    Link Parent
    There are two questions here: How do we use essays as a tool to help students learn? How do we evaluate how much students have learned? I think it will help to separate these two. In other words,...

    There are two questions here:

    1. How do we use essays as a tool to help students learn?
    2. How do we evaluate how much students have learned?

    I think it will help to separate these two. In other words, the percentage of a student's grade that comes from evaluating their essays needs to go way down. Getting AI to write your essay is easy to do and hard to catch. It doesn't make sense to write rules you can't enforce and which you know won't be followed.

    The students in the article have a point. Why is the professor constraining which tools students are allowed to use for research? Once they graduate, odds are good they will be using AI as part of their workflow. Shouldn't they be learning effective use of these research tools during university?

    The professor still has to assign grades, though. Here are some ideas for doing that effectively:

    • Quizzes, tests, and final exams take place in class. These can take any form you like. If you want essays on the tests, hand out blue books as in days of old. If student handwriting isn't up to the task, use non-networked computers. Or electric typewriters. Whatever allows students to produce an essay without the possibility of outside help.
    • More emphasis on discussions in class. Ask the students questions about what they've written. Class participation becomes a bigger part of the grade.
    9 votes

  11. Comment on Team behind Twitterrific launches a multi-feed app called Tapestry in ~tech

    DawnPaladin
    Link
    Runs on iPads, but not Intel-based Macs. :(

    Runs on iPads, but not Intel-based Macs. :(

  12. Comment on The day I taught AI to read code like a Senior Developer in ~comp

    DawnPaladin
    Link Parent
    Fair enough. I haven't examined their HN behavior.

    Fair enough. I haven't examined their HN behavior.

    1 vote

  13. Comment on The day I taught AI to read code like a Senior Developer in ~comp

    DawnPaladin
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I think "almost" is a weasel word that lets people say what they think without needing to stand behind their words. If you literally meant "it's good that you wrote this, because its quality is...

    I think "almost" is a weasel word that lets people say what they think without needing to stand behind their words. If you literally meant "it's good that you wrote this, because its quality is very slightly above the threshold of not being worth the electrons it's printed on," then fine, but that's not how it comes across.

    I can see where you're coming from about blogs. When you make your living as a developer, the line between altruistic knowledge-sharing and cynical self-promotion can be blurry. I too have seen lots of low-quality blogs. But I get enormous value out of the good ones, and I think you can't get the good without the bad.

    2 votes

  14. Comment on The day I taught AI to read code like a Senior Developer in ~comp

    DawnPaladin
    Link Parent
    Why would they want to interact here when this is the kind of comment they get? If you don't like the way someone is posting (or not posting) on Tildes, it's fine to say so. If you object to what...

    Finally, whenever they post their own blog on here they post it and bail without any interaction.

    Why would they want to interact here when this is the kind of comment they get?

    If you don't like the way someone is posting (or not posting) on Tildes, it's fine to say so. If you object to what they're saying, talk about that - we are here for discussion, after all. But telling someone their ideas aren't worthy of blogging about makes the internet worse. When you tell people not to blog, you get fewer blogs. Blogs are the best place to find humans writing in depth and at length to share knowledge. When they go away, all that's left is spam and corporations.

    You might think "okay, but we only want to encourage the good blogs, not the bad ones." That doesn't work. As with every other creative endeavor, you usually have to write a bunch of garbage before you can attain brilliance. If you discourage bad bloggers, you will never get any good ones.

    I don't think this blog post is bad. But even if I did, I would never tell the author they shouldn't have written it. Telling someone "this blog post isn't a good fit for our discussion forum" or even "your idea needs refinement" can be part of valid, constructive criticism that helps people improve. Telling someone "you shouldn't have bothered writing this" is not constructive, and it's out of line.

    3 votes

  15. Comment on The day I taught AI to read code like a Senior Developer in ~comp

    DawnPaladin
    Link Parent
    I found the post helpful. I'm not a senior developer, so the technique nmn describes for how to review PRs was new to me; I think it will come in handy. I'm surprised that grouping the files in a...

    I found the post helpful. I'm not a senior developer, so the technique nmn describes for how to review PRs was new to me; I think it will come in handy.

    I'm surprised that grouping the files in a PR by function would make such a difference. I'm going to have to experiment with my prompting more.

    Finally:

    This isn't groundbreaking. In fact I feel it almost shouldn't even be worthy of a blog post.

    What the fuck? Don't ever tell people their discoveries aren't good enough to blog about. Everyone is at different stages of learning. Something that reads as uninsightful to you is helpful for someone like me, because we're at different points in our learning journey. That's doubly true for a field like LLMs where tons of stuff is brand new and people are figuring out the basics every day.

    23 votes

  16. Comment on How to feel bad and be wrong in ~science

    DawnPaladin
    Link
    This guy is great. Adding him to my RSS feed.

    This guy is great. Adding him to my RSS feed.

    2 votes

  17. Comment on Are LLMs making Stack Overflow irrelevant? in ~tech

    DawnPaladin
    Link Parent
    I agree. StackOverflow has launched an AI product; I haven't found it useful yet. But I think there's tons of potential to have LLMs doing the unglamorous janitor work that's so essential to a...

    I agree. StackOverflow has launched an AI product; I haven't found it useful yet. But I think there's tons of potential to have LLMs doing the unglamorous janitor work that's so essential to a well-functioning forum.

    2 votes

  18. Comment on Are LLMs making Stack Overflow irrelevant? in ~tech

    DawnPaladin
    (edited )
    Link
    From what I remember lurking on StackOverflow Meta (where sitewide issues are discussed), Stack Exchange the company has spent several years trying to make StackOverflow more newbie-friendly....

    From what I remember lurking on StackOverflow Meta (where sitewide issues are discussed), Stack Exchange the company has spent several years trying to make StackOverflow more newbie-friendly. They've improved the ask-a-question screen to help people ask better questions. They've instituted policies aimed at reducing the number of questions that get immediately closed by moderators. In 2018 they announced a change to community standards requiring that users and moderators be less hostile toward askers.

    The response from the mods and high-ranking posters on StackOverflow Meta was overwhelmingly negative. StackOverflow has two core problems:

    1. The ratio of dedicated mods and experts to newbies has always been very low, creating burnout. I'm trying to clear out a hundred low-effort dumbass questions before lunch just to break even - now you're telling me I have to be nice to these people?
    2. The founding promise of the reputation system - work hard, contribute well, and you'll be rewarded with power and influence - had an unspoken limitation: all of the actually important policy decisions are made by Stack Exchange the company, and they don't care what your reputation score is.

    So while company leadership was trying to solve the problem of "newbies are being driven away by unfriendliness, causing site traffic and revenue to go down", mods were trying to solve the opposite problem: "We have too many dumbass questions, causing moderation and quality to suffer and therefore driving away experts."

    StackOverflow's mods and its corporate leadership have never gotten along. The mods frequently ask for more powerful moderation tools which never materialize; the corporate leadership dictates unpopular policy changes, and the mods get outraged and go on strike.

    This tense and unhappy state of affairs showed every sign of continuing indefinitely. Then ChatGPT enters the picture. ChatGPT answers questions instantly, doesn't yell at you for asking, doesn't require you to extract your software bug into a minimum reproducible example, and will answer as many follow-up questions as you want. It's not always correct, but then neither is StackOverflow. It hits like a bombshell, leading to the state of affairs we see today.

    So as the number of daily questions on StackOverflow trends quickly downwards, it's nice to know that the mods of StackOverflow have gotten exactly what they want.

    27 votes

  19. Comment on Recommend your social/softer science fiction books in ~books

    DawnPaladin
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    A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys is my favorite book in years. I posted a writeup last March, but that might have more plot details than you want; if you want to go in completely unspoiled,...

    A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys is my favorite book in years. I posted a writeup last March, but that might have more plot details than you want; if you want to go in completely unspoiled, I'll just say that it grapples seriously with climate change while also being doggedly hopeful about—even insistent upon—our ability to overcome it. Humanity is organized less into nations and more by watersheds. It's very leftist and eco-centric while also being very tech-positive. (@sparksbet, you might like this!)

    3 votes

  20. Comment on Nepenthes: a tarpit intended to catch AI web crawlers in ~tech

    DawnPaladin
    Link Parent
    100% agree that trying to destroy or boycott new technologies are completely ineffective strategies. I also agree that AI has the potential to centralize power and increase inequality. That's why...

    100% agree that trying to destroy or boycott new technologies are completely ineffective strategies.

    I also agree that AI has the potential to centralize power and increase inequality. That's why I'm studying math in the evenings, working toward getting a degree in AI. If we want good outcomes from this technology, we're going to need people using this technology to produce good outcomes.