Brian Beach has moved @bwbeach@qoto.org

'Time you enjoyed wasting was not wasted.'

- John Lennon

#RandomQuote #quotes #quote #bot

"Better than the eclipse"

- Anyone with a camera

#Aurora

@yhancik @darius The old thinking was that you should be rotating your gender every 90 days for security reasons but that’s proven to be outdated thinking. Modern best practices are to use a unique and complex gender for every interaction, to avoid repetition and store them in a secure gender manager.

Pablo Casals, in his 80s, asked why he practices every day. "Because I think I'm getting better."

Pat Metheny, why he has restricted his synth-guitar to just two voices, "I don't want to try a new voice until I feel I've mastered these two."

Somerset Maugham, on the definition of a novel: "A prose work of a certain length, that has something wrong with it."

Like many other technologists, I gave my time and expertise for free to #StackOverflow because the content was licensed CC-BY-SA - meaning that it was a public good. It brought me joy to help people figure out why their #ASR code wasn't working, or assist with a #CUDA bug.

Now that a deal has been struck with #OpenAI to scrape all the questions and answers in Stack Overflow, to train #GenerativeAI models, like #LLMs, without attribution to authors (as required under the CC-BY-SA license under which Stack Overflow content is licensed), to be sold back to us (the SA clause requires derivative works to be shared under the same license), I have issued a Data Deletion request to Stack Overflow to disassociate my username from my Stack Overflow username, and am closing my account, just like I did with Reddit, Inc.

https://policies.stackoverflow.co/data-request/

The data I helped create is going to be bundled in an #LLM and sold back to me.

In a single move, Stack Overflow has alienated its community - which is also its main source of competitive advantage, in exchange for token lucre.

Stack Exchange, Stack Overflow's former instantiation, used to fulfill a psychological contract - help others out when you can, for the expectation that others may in turn assist you in the future. Now it's not an exchange, it's #enshittification.

Programmers now join artists and copywriters, whose works have been snaffled up to create #GenAI solutions.

The silver lining I see is that once OpenAI creates LLMs that generate code - like Microsoft has done with Copilot on GitHub - where will they go to get help with the bugs that the generative AI models introduce, particularly, given the recent GitClear report, of the "downward pressure on code quality" caused by these tools?

While this is just one more example of #enshittification, it's also a salient lesson for #DevRel folks - if your community is your source of advantage, don't upset them.

In case you missed my delighted skewering: https://www.citationneeded.news/review-read-write-own-by-chris-dixon/

Basically all of the speaking requests I've received over the last six months, all any of them want to talk about is AI, b/c everyone is trying to position themselves as being the perfect partner to usher companies through the madness. I'm probably not going to be asked to do speaking much longer, b/c I find I am fairly hawkish on all the AI hype.

I guess I come from a pretty old-fashioned point of view on technology vs security, which is basically that the more you complexify something, the harder it is to secure. And most of the AI visions that companies are espousing would increase the complexity of security efforts by several orders of magnitude. The issue of data governance is just one small microcosm of that (one in which most fail at miserably already).

I think it's also safe to predict that first movers here (beyond the now entrenched big ones) are going to get clobbered by regulation soon.

THIS ISN'T A GAME
you all need to protest Biden NOW because he won't shift antifascist gears on November 6th.

swap EVIL for FASCIST and the lesser of evils is still fascist.

you need to fight fascism NOW; especially if you are to vote for Biden.

that's what it means to vote with your protest boots on.

PROTEST BIDEN NOW, VOTE FOR BIDEN IN NOVEMBER.

that's what praxis is all about.

This 1947 Anti-Facist short is so simple and so effective, you realize how stupid all the arguments to the contrary are. You can say a lot in 2 minutes.

https://youtu.be/BCVK7LdI4ao?si=CUhuXZAfQEy6E9vY

A lot of team work happens at our #RepairCafe - here Kevin is called over to help Richard with a mystery issue with a vacuum cleaner.

Our #volunteers love to collaborate and share knowledge with each other as well as with our attendees.

@repaircafe

When they tell you
(and they will tell you)
that only cowards
wear masks in public
reply by telling them
that in these dark times
the bravest thing
any of us can do
is take care of each other.

Security and reliability successfully ends up becoming job #1 when you start promoting people for their work on security and reliability.

Can't we solve the entire AI problem by making the decision-makers who choose to use AI over traditional processes responsible and legally liable for any errors or harm the machine causes in their name?

If they still want to launch it after that requirement, then I'll trust that it's solidly vetted tech.

The best environments in software engineering are the ones you can continuously ask why something works the way it does until you get to the bare instructions. All the innovation comes from that exploration and knowledge.

If you are the tech-savvy person within your family or friends group :

Never ever shame someone for coming to you for advice after being the victim of a scam, malware, or for using an unsecured product.

If you do this,
they might never come back to you later. They might just feel so ashamed they will just stay alone with their tech problems.

Instead, always tell them:

1. It was a good idea to come to you with this. Be empathetic with them 💚

2. Give them advice on how to minimize the damage now. Actionable advice 🚑

3. Help them harden their security for now and for the future. Recommend better products to them. But be careful not to overwhelm them with advice. One step at the time 🔒

4. Talk to them with respect and empathy. Tell them how the people who abused their trust are horrible and anyone can fall for the right scam. Remind them there are things to do to reduce the risks of being victimized again in the future, and help them slowly implementing these 💪

5. Be thankful they trusted you with this. It means they think highly of you 🥰

#Security #Privacy

This story has everything - committing burglary while on TDY, secret spiderman lairs, abandoned circuit city tunnels to do crime, fake identities. I see why they are making it into a movie

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/california-man-hid-months-secret-room-circuit-city-19422415.php?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us