kjw's recent activity

  1. Comment on Canadian YouTuber builds 'Flock-like' camera to exclusively track police vehicles, gets a visit from police — officers visit his home to express privacy concerns in ~tech

    kjw
    Link Parent
    Or campaign donors, multibilionaires, those who rule de facto using their power (money)?

    Or campaign donors, multibilionaires, those who rule de facto using their power (money)?

    3 votes

  2. Comment on The mathocalypse in ~science

  3. Comment on The mathocalypse in ~science

    kjw
    Link Parent
    Who is writing the logic test, then? From the answer you've linked: I don't buy "it would be very embarrassing if more than a handful of solutions were flawed". For years corporations has been...

    Who is writing the logic test, then? From the answer you've linked:

    Are the solutions correct?

    Again because of how many there are, it's not possible to say definitively yet. I will say that my personal opinion is that probably most of them are correct. For people who aren't in the know, a big project in math/CS has been formal proof verification. Simply put, this is a way to write math proofs in a way that computers can check their correctness. Because of the propensity of LLMs to spew out giant chunks devoid of meaning, a focus has been specifically on training LLMs to write proofs in Lean (a programming language for computer-checkable proofs), to reduce the amount of slop necessary to wade through. The complication here is that these Lean proofs themselves need to be verified, i.e., a 'proof' might assert True while actually proving something subtly different from the natural-language question. So to reiterate, although the existence of a Lean proof is a strong sign for correctness, it still needs oversight. But OpenAI does employ mathematicians, and it would be very embarrassing if more than a handful of solutions were flawed, so I think when the dust settles, we'll find most are correct.

    I don't buy "it would be very embarrassing if more than a handful of solutions were flawed".
    For years corporations has been lying to humanity and I don't see any embarrassment slowing down this process.

    2 votes

  5. Comment on Blocking of unverified apps on Android starts in Brazil and other three countries in ~tech

    kjw
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I told my parents not to install anything, ask me first every time and read stuff that's written on the screen so that they catch some patterns and won't call me every time. Another alternative...

    I told my parents not to install anything, ask me first every time and read stuff that's written on the screen so that they catch some patterns and won't call me every time. Another alternative was to get them dumbphones and so far we manage to live with them using smartphones.

    I'm not afraid of clicking things few times and all this procedure. I'm afraid that this is just one of many steps in the future towards too much power owned by big tech. I imagine less and less people using nonplaystore apps, even though the apps are useful, because it's less tempting to install them. So less and less people fighting for indie apps and devs. More power to the corporation, and so on. And the end goal is to ban apps that aren't built with purpose of making corporation as powerful as possible. And this I find scary, evil and dangerous enough to defend against the step they currently started implementing.

    5 votes

  6. Comment on We have recently discovered and recovered forty-eight prehistoric arrows in Jotunheimen – the trend is clear: now the oldest ice is melting in ~humanities.history

    kjw
    Link

    The Glacial archaeology programme in Innlandet, Secrets of the Ice, has just returned from three intense weeks at the melting frontier in the high mountains.

    Now we have facts from the ground: the ice is disappearing much faster than we expected. The landscape has changed dramatically, and large areas that were recently covered by ice are now ice-free.

    1 vote

  7. Comment on The doomsday cult inside OpenAI in ~tech

    kjw
    Link Parent
    My personal wave of fear is that we're exploiting Earth way too much, mostly for tech lords to become even more wealthy and powerful. And of course colonization of countries worldwide by tech...

    The current wave of fear

    My personal wave of fear is that we're exploiting Earth way too much, mostly for tech lords to become even more wealthy and powerful. And of course colonization of countries worldwide by tech corporations. I'm not afraid of LLMs becoming too powerful. I'm afraid of people behind those LLMs becoming too powerful. And afraid of too many resources spent of this idiotic dream of theirs, and the price paid by the rest of the people.

    5 votes

  8. Comment on What are we in a golden age of? in ~talk

    kjw
    Link Parent
    And we've reached highest global temperature so far, yay! Living on a mortgage is fantastic, I just hope younger folks won't be too mad at us! /s

    And we've reached highest global temperature so far, yay! Living on a mortgage is fantastic, I just hope younger folks won't be too mad at us! /s

  9. Comment on X corp is taking down Nitter instances and demands takedown of project repository in ~tech

    kjw
    Link Parent
    It is relevant I think. The site doesn't want you to have a useful way to access content, this fact is relevant. So the only solution I see is to ditch it, the more people leave this nazi site the...

    It is relevant I think. The site doesn't want you to have a useful way to access content, this fact is relevant. So the only solution I see is to ditch it, the more people leave this nazi site the better the world will be. Convince people you're following to add another way of reading their content, in some better place.

    3 votes

  10. Comment on X corp is taking down Nitter instances and demands takedown of project repository in ~tech

    kjw
    Link Parent
    One can write their favorite artists and ask them to publish somewhere else too, just an idea in between.

    One can write their favorite artists and ask them to publish somewhere else too, just an idea in between.

    5 votes

  11. Comment on X corp is taking down Nitter instances and demands takedown of project repository in ~tech

    kjw
    Link Parent
    Any other fedi instance. Just stop contributing to technology used to divide people. Stop using technology owned by a murderer. There are lots of alternatives, like mas.to, mastodon.social,...

    Any other fedi instance. Just stop contributing to technology used to divide people. Stop using technology owned by a murderer. There are lots of alternatives, like mas.to, mastodon.social, pixelfed.social and many many more.
    Or, as I'm slowly convincing my friends - stop using it at all, instead go and meet your friends in real life. Not easy, by doable

    8 votes

  13. Comment on Fairphone Gen 6+ now available in the US in ~tech

    kjw
    Link Parent
    Yeah I was hesitating to buy one. However I had found no other ethical alternative, to I went with Fairphone 4 back in the day. In the end it turned out I don't use headphones as much as I thought...

    Yeah I was hesitating to buy one. However I had found no other ethical alternative, to I went with Fairphone 4 back in the day. In the end it turned out I don't use headphones as much as I thought I'll be, not even bluetooth ones. So I'm happy to have my FP, even without jack. Of course my mind would sit much more comfortable knowing that I have jack, but well, I don't need it that much.

  14. Comment on Young adults in the US are increasingly wary of AI, concerned it will take jobs in ~tech

    kjw
    Link Parent
    AI will automate some jobs, also other jobs are artificially limited by humans, e.g. there are limits on how many medical doctors can start specialization courses every year, and that number could...

    AI will automate some jobs, also other jobs are artificially limited by humans, e.g. there are limits on how many medical doctors can start specialization courses every year, and that number could be elevated. We should be talking about such stuff. Media should be writing about it. There are still many fields with a huge need for workers, but to gain the license to become such worker is too difficult not because of field difficulty, but artificial limits created by politicians and specialists on such fields.

    5 votes

  15. Comment on The Shoe Thrower [podcast] in ~society

    kjw
    Link

    When no one seems to be listening, how far do you go to be heard?

    In December, 2008, George W. Bush made a surprise visit to Baghdad for a press conference. And at the very end of his remarks, a shoe came flying past his head.

    It was “the shoe heard around the world,” and countless jokes and memes ensued.

    But in the pandemonium, many missed the story of the man at the center: Muntadhar al-Zaidi, a weary journalist trying to get the world to see the Iraq War in a different light. Even fewer people know what happened to him after.

    Nearly two decades later, Radiolab reporter Sarah Qari tracked al-Zaidi down to learn the story of his life. What she found was a story about grief, anger and the line where journalism ends and protest begins.

    1 vote

  17. Comment on AI data center developers begin suing local jurisdictions behind bans and moratoriums — claims range from officials exceeding authority to violations of due process and equal protection laws in ~tech

    kjw
    Link Parent
    That's why it's very important to track these lawsuits. I also don't understand, however we're talking about billionaires and big tech, they have tons of money and influence.

    That's why it's very important to track these lawsuits. I also don't understand, however we're talking about billionaires and big tech, they have tons of money and influence.

    1 vote

  19. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    kjw
    Link
    I've replaced broken bicycle shifter for the new one and it works! I'm very happy because it's my first time repairing a bicycle. It was a little bit stressful in the beginning, but it went pretty...

    I've replaced broken bicycle shifter for the new one and it works! I'm very happy because it's my first time repairing a bicycle. It was a little bit stressful in the beginning, but it went pretty smooth. Happy to be able to successfully do some manual work!

  20. Comment on New Zealand has a new official language — English in ~society