Simon @spoltier@qoto.org

Hewlett Packard report that they are spotting AI-generated malware in the wild, not through complex analysis or watermarking, but because… it is weirdly well-commented. https://threatresearch.ext.hp.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/HP_Wolf_Security_Threat_Insights_Report_September_2024.pdf

I can't even tell you how much work it takes to create interventions this high quality but also this pragmatic

"We chose to design the intervention ... so that individual instructors beyond the research team could more easily adopt the intervention in their own courses without needing to implement systemic department-wide or interdepartmental curricular changes and so that students could select and engage in the modules most relevant to their learning based on feedback they received"

Shamelessly biased because two of my dearest friends are authors on this AMAZING RESEARCH about opportunity gaps for chemistry-in-biology, but just look at it!! Look at the depth of this lit review! 1800 students across seven course sections! An asynchronous mastery based intervention!

https://www.lifescied.org/doi/10.1187/cbe.24-05-0151

Ok let me explain where I was coming from:

Santa is the god of theft.

Normal Protestant Santa has no motivation as a spirit: why does the entire present thing happen? He just does it!

Santa as the god of theft is a much better myth - all theft in the world is actually committed by Santa year round in the same way that trickster spirits or creatures like elves cause accidents or other categories of misfortune. The North Pole isn't a factory, it's a chop shop where santa and the elves make the stolen goods resellable. Santa then gives a fraction of the laundered products back as gifts in the same way that the Mafia would distribute Christmas turkeys, to keep the balance of benefits level in the neighborhood so we look the other way at how Santa makes his money.

Santa being primarily a counterfeiter explains why Santa can't satisfy arbitrary wishes, but can only provide existing retail products. Santa also then provides a wider allegory about the fundamental structure of property as theft in multiple ways - in that literally the machinery of retail production relies on theft, and also that keeping the wheels turning on capitalism requires the constant churn of artificial destruction and reinjection of waste. Finally santa as god of theft provides a healthier cultural myth about theft, that we are all being stolen from and to not seek to punish individual people, because we will all receive some other gift from the universe to make up for it. Giving gifts is an act of restoring to someone what the world stole from them, making them whole in a way that they don't know what they needed and don't retain attachments to what was lost, but rather embrace what is given. Attributing a gift and especially a handmade gift as being "from Santa" is an acknowledgement that we are not solely responsible for any gift, and offer it as a humble apology from the universe that takes much more from us. Excessive, hyperconsumptive gift culture would be seen as properly excessive, and you'd expect norming idioms like "santa must have robbed their asses hard this year."

So then while currently all Christmas songs are just about santa showing up and giving presents, you would expect to also hear songs about santa being seen doing petty crime the rest of the year. Hence "fuckin santa, he's fuckin stealing my bike"

Online communities are like coral reefs. How are new coral reefs established? A single coral may attach to a rock, or bit of debris, corals can support many other organisms, sponges, small fish, crabs, cluster around, then more corals, more diversity.

The fediverse is anchored around enthusiasm for technology and (formal) education. We can branch out from this point, aggregate, spread. In the long run this is better for the whole community.

Turns out we weren't done for major LLM releases in 2024 after all... Alibaba's Qwen just released QvQ, a "visual reasoning model" - the same chain-of-thought trick as OpenAI's o1 but applied strictly to running a prompt against an image

I've been trying it out and it's a lot of fun to poke around with: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/24/qvq/

I cannot believe I am asking this question:

If I tell Windows to show the desktop, and it doesn't show the desktop.

Is there a way to empty the recycle bin without being able to access the desktop.

Can I do it from an Explorer.exe window. Can I do it from the command line. From the start bar.

@mcc If you open a `run` prompt, you can open the Recycle Bin location in a file explorer by running `shell:RecycleBinFolder`

If you're feeling lonely tonight or on Xmas day, feel free to join my Matrix chat. I'll be monitoring it, and there are almost always a few people to chat with.

Just say hi when you come in and you'll have people to waste your time with. Just as if you were with your family and friends.

I recommend using the Element interface.

Please BOOST for reach.
#chat #christmas #xmas #friendly

http://chat.mrfunkedude.com/

Wrote up my notes on ModernBERT, the brand new modern alternative to 2018-era BERT released by https://www.answer.ai/ https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/24/modernbert/

Question for anyone who started 2024 thinking that this whole "AI" thing (specifically of the ChatGPT LLM/generative AI variety) was over-hyped junk that wasn't actually useful for anything

Have developments over the last twelve months changed your mind?

Have you seen the Luc Besson movie, The Fifth Element ?

A discussion with friends last night centered around age vs exposure to the movie, so I'm posting a poll to gather data unscientifically.

Please boost for exposure, 🙏

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/12/18/majority-americans-oppose-trumps-proposals-test-democracys-limits/

For Xennials like me that witnessed the boundless optimism of the 1990's, and watched the disaster of the Chicago Boys "helping Russia reform", this is excellent reading:

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2024-12-18/long-telegram-1990s-whose-russia-it-anyway-toward-policy

Süsser die Boxen nie klingen: Nun tönen sie wieder laut von fern und nah – Weihnachtslieder. Aber bevor Sie einfach irgendeine Playlist laufen lassen, lesen Sie vorher, wie die Wahl der Musik Ihre Festtage prägt.

https://www.republik.ch/2024/12/24/kling-boexchen-klingelingeling?utm_medium=social&utm_source=mastodon&utm_campaign=cm&utm_content=klingeling

Kim Kyung-Hoon took this photo of a press conference by the CEOs of Nissan, Honda and Mitsubishi, and accidentally created the perfect album cover.

Dîtes, l’autre jour je bossais sur le scénario d’une suite au film « Présidents » de Anne Fontaine et j’avais rédigé une liste de 35 anciens politiciens français complètement has been et bien réacs, parfaits pour une caricature.

J’ai paumé cette liste l’autre jour dans la rue de Varenne à Paris alors que je croisais un type appelé François.

Si vous avez trouvé la liste ou si vous connaissez ce François (qui l’a peut-être ramassée), vous pouvez lui demander de me la rendre ?

Merci !

In der Zwischenzeit stößt Al-Abdulmohsen vor mittlerweile 40.000 Followern öffentlich und unter seinem Klarnamen auf X (Coverbild: Sturmgewehr) rechtsextreme Parolen raus, wirft mit Drohungen und Hetze um sich. Mehrere X-Nutzer berichten heute, dass sie sich aus Angst vor Selbstjustiz an die Polizei gewandt haben, wo nichts unternommen wurde. Im Februar 2024 ruft er in einem Dienstgebäude der Berliner Polizei den Notruf der Feuerwehr.
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