Post @post@qoto.org

My problem with that “Bing told me it loves me” article is that the author waited until the last paragraphs to explain why, leading to misunderstanding about what’s messed up about it. (tldr: by mentioning jungian psychology and dark fantasies he primed the statistical model to cobble together dark, existential, and manipulative strings of words)

There is no concern that Bing is secretly alive or sentient.

There is concern this software could be harmful to people who don’t understand that.

Now Cory talking about the GPT3 mergers with search engines , especially Google with their 'huge secretive apparatus', says @pluralistic ... It's an 'incredibly weird pathological decision' to put this 'habitual liar' into their search engine, when it's already struggling with so much shitty SEO spam - this is so true 😬

The Swedish government advises against using Zoom in a recent report.

Read more about why they’re pushing instead for more open-source solutions like Nextcloud Hub! 👏

#Nextcloud #NextcloudHub #privacy

https://nextcloud.com/blog/swedish-government-advises-against-zoom/

Dear retards: bitcoin can't fix anything if'n ya just hoard it. It only works for society if you spend it. Nobody believes anything you say about it fixing the world when we know you're just trying to hype the price of your stash in USD.

I've been very quietly playing with #Logseq for a week or so and I have to say it's an amazing piece of software. Granted, the learning curve is steep and I miss #Obsidian and some of it's predictability but Logseq never fails to find little ways of delighting me. It’s difficult but I’m trusting it.

Logseq feels very natural in many ways and I'm excited to continue this journey.

Thanks to #debian, #lineageOS, @fdroidorg , #mozilla, @k9mail, @thunderbird, #logseq and many more for all the awesome free software

#ilovefs

@msw I can only judge that advocacy based on what I can see and know about. I"m pleased to hear the assertion, though, and look forward to seeing it come to pass over time - will observe with interest.

That said, as a #FOSS advocate, I would not accept a role with AWS or any other of the #FrightfulFive corporations and those many who aspire to be among them (I have rejected offers from other anti-#FOSS mega-corporations in the past) @alcinnz @downey @skyfaller

@alcinnz there are people for whose commitment to principles we shared I used to have a great deal of respect... but some recent have gone to work for Microsoft or Google or Facebook, among other rapacious tech mega-corporations. and I cannot maintain my admiration for their commitment. @msw @downey @skyfaller

@alcinnz sorry, Adrian. We've got to call out those who have vested interests and remember, at some level of seniority (which I strongly suspect Matt meets or exceeds), who we choose to work for is an ethical decision, and we need to take responsibility (and hold others responsible) for that. @msw @downey @skyfaller

@msw I think that accepting resources from corporations who are well known to actively undermine #Copyleft is unfortunately not a neutral act. It signals an implicit acceptance of those donors' actions, and an obligation from the OSI to give them the benefit of the doubt. We need to convince democratic gov'ts to fund #FOSS as digital critical infrastructure, and shun corporations and their donations entirely. A smart gov't would recognise that. Few, if any, are. @alcinnz @downey @skyfaller

@downey yes, I haven't completely given up on them yet, as I have on the Linux Foundation, but I'm certainly very sceptical these days. I'm not an ally of 'open source' except to the extent that it's used by many when they mean Free Software, and I accept their passion if not correctness in terminology. @skyfaller @alcinnz

Interesting.

#OpenSource Initiative #OSI using a proprietary issue tracker software for its new website.

Gotta appease those sweet sweet corporate sponsors, I guess. Even when said sponsors are selling proprietary software.

#openwashing #hypocrisy #GiveUpGitHub

https://github.com/OpenSourceOrg/dotOrg

this interview with the Mozilla CEO is really baffling to me

https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/14/23598344/mozilla-firefox-ceo-mitchell-baker-microsoft-edge-bing-google-apple-ai

first off she talks about how Mozilla isn't really anti-microsoft or anti-big-tech, which ... uh, what? and then not very long after that she's talking about how Mozilla has always been anti-tracking... how do you reconcile that? how out of touch do you have to be to think you can be anti-tracking without being anti-big-tech

later it gets worse:

> Q: Do you think that you have to build generative AI products into Firefox to take advantage of that disruptive moment?

> A: Well, at some level the answer is yes, because that’s the new technology.

everything she says on this topic is a tremendous nothingburger of meaninglessness; we have to invest in this because it's new, even if we have no idea what it's for or why it would be helpful

the silicon valley brainworms really show no mercy

The thing about calling machine learning "AI" constantly is that it creates the widespread expectation of actual intelligence and there is none, zero, that is not what is happening here.

It is obscene that governments effectively require people to have internet connectivity to be able to function in society but abdicate responsibility for ensuring that people actually have that and delegate it to for-profit enterprises instead

Fun fact: Branding and forking aside, #LibreOffice's initial codebase (Star Office) predates #Microsoft Office by three years. #opensource

With the new Navigation API, you can now show the native spinner + stop button for any asynchronous operation - all you need is a Promise.

#Obsidian saved my ass at work today. Thanks to my booster shot, I have very vague memories of what I did on Friday. (Among the side effects I get from vaccinations, it is brain fog. Fun stuff.)
Fortunately, I take detailed project notes with interstitial journaling so I got updated quickly and managed to report on what I did.

#ObsidianMD #PKM

Cisco gets super weird because they didn't want to keep supporting new hardware, so back in the mid-2000s they actually started running a Linux kernel. There was some guy at Kiwicon 2016 (I think) who showed how he hacked a Cisco router and broke out of ios into the base Linux shell.

The base Linux only shows once Ethernet adapter because the others are implemented using PCI-E userspace drivers (which is apparently a thing) and ios is one massive binary (I think it was a few hundred megs) that's run as the only process.

They somehow adapted the entire OS to run as a userspace process on a Linux kernel.