ABrockwell @aebrockwell@qoto.org

😂😂😂😂 tech hiring in 2026 z. credit https://www.instagram.com/spaceboycantlol/

RE: https://mastodonapp.uk/@JohnSullivan/116842603611650876

“Some of the company’s most experienced personnel left before all of their accumulated knowledge could be fully transferred into Ford’s automated systems…”

This is apparently the new line for blaming companies for AI failures: you didn’t fully upload the brains of your senior people before firing them! You have to complete the extraction process first! Suck them dry, •then• discard them!

Machine learning does not actually work that way, but…in this FOMO-driven industry, anything goes to blame the customer.

🧵

@inthehands Excellent analysis. I saw that Ford story too. The tragedy is that it wasn’t the automated systems that failed to learn (entirely predictable), it was the management staff who failed to learn.

Dude. What a .. decade?

Remember when we were so hopeful that the start of this decade - in 2020 - would bring good things? (haha?)

WTH happened?

I think everyone is dazed.. it's like, we keep getting punched.

I'm on the constant lookout for moments of kindness and beauty - and adding my bit.

What are your strategies?

#world #climate #climatechange #covid #art #mosstodon #politics #nature #mentalhealth

Actual journalists would write “Trump tries to avoid blame for Reflecting Pool fiasco, blaming imaginary ‘vandals’; Law enforcement obliges him by arresting tourists.” www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

As Reflecting Pool paint peels...

Whenever I open firefox and it says it was updated I have to check and make sure the AI kill switch is still on.

That's what opt-out means.

Reliance on artificial-intelligence tools degrades the abilities of physicians and software engineers.

Evidence suggests that AI-driven ‘deskilling’ is starting to happen in medicine, computer science and other fields. Researchers are now discussing how to preserve important human expertise in the age of AI.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01947-1

AP's piece on Reflecting Pool algae is a perfect of example of how Big Journalism allows itself to be a conduit for Trump world's lies. The phrase "without offering substantiation" -- better than nothing -- doesn't make up for being a stenographer for deceit.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-reflecting-pool-paint-algae-6b7b499ada2701a34bc6bc380013ad04

The fact that we're willing to rely on LLMs to generate code knowing that it only mostly works because that code has been generated before thousands of times is not an indication that stochastic models are good, it's a massive, punishing indictment of computing as a field.

Using an insanely huge expensive model to quasi-reproduce work that's been created thousands of times already isn't productive or efficient. It's a symptom of profound failures of language, practice, process and imagination.

A 3-week old screech owl took a flying leap at me today and climbed up my chest to sit on my shoulder. She then climbed up my ear with her predatory talons and sat on my head.

How's your Friday going?

#ScreechOwl #OwlsOfMastodon #SuperbOwls

On the train and four older (60+) people are having a nice little grumble about how annoying it is that there's always AI at the top of search results and it's usually wrong.

Just in case you were worried that only young people hate this crap.

I'll never have hate in my heart because there's too much cholesterol in there to fit anything else.

The current state of business.

#business #ai #advertising #advertisement

John Finnemore on the French horn/cor anglais:

"I was idly wondering why the cor anglais has a French name meaning ‘English horn’, and the French horn has an English name meaning… well, ‘French horn’. I looked it up, even though I knew there would just be some reasonable but rather dull explanation.

"There isn’t. There is a completely bonkers explanation, in both cases. Here’s the first.

"So. The cor anglais isn’t English, or French. But that’s nothing, because another thing it isn’t is… a horn. It’s basically an overgrown oboe, and it’s from Silesia. But being thin with a bulb on the end, it looks a little like the trumpets angels are shown playing in medieval art.

"Or at least it did to the Germans, who started calling it the Engellisches Horn, or angel’s horn. Can you see the hilarious misunderstanding that’s about to happen? Well, that happened. The Italians thought the Germans called it the English Horn, so they translated it to corno inglese. The French got it from the Italians, and called it the cor anglais. The British got it from the French, and presumably stared at it, thought ‘We can’t call that an English horn! It’s nothing to do with us, we’ve only just this minute seen one!’ …and I suppose decided just to keep the French name to save embarrassment.

"But that is rationality itself compared to what happened with the “French” horn.

"Right. The French horn. It isn’t French, or English… but it is a horn. So that’s something. (In fact, horn players just call it ‘the horn’, and they wish you would too, but they can’t make you.) This story is simpler than the cor anglais one, but even more gloriously stupid.

"The French were famous for making beautiful hunting-horn type horns: curly tubes that made a nice noise when you blew through them. Then the Germans came up with a more complicated horn with slides and crooks and valves and what-have-you. So British horn players started calling the horns they played in orchestras French Horns, to make it clear they were having nothing to do with those funny looking new German horns with all the bits hanging off them. But the thing is… slides and crooks and valves and what-have-you are a really good idea. You can play tunes with them and everything. So, before long, in a brilliantly British combination of ruthless pragmatism and equally ruthless face-saving, British horn players were playing German horns… but still calling them French horns.

"In summary then: the cor anglais, or English horn, is a Silesian oboe that the Italians thought the Germans thought was English, but the Germans actually thought looked angelic. Whereas the French horn is a German horn that the British called the French horn to distinguish it from the German horn… which is what it is.

"All clear? Good. Carry on."

I've said it before (and I'm saying it again because I'm practicing to be an old guy who repeats his stories over and over) but I do not like the idea that adapting a book or comic or whateverinto a movie/TV show is "bringing it to life".

Nah, the original work is what was alive. Your movie is just official fan fic 😛

#books #comics #writingCommunity #hotTake

Timnit Gebru was fired from Google in December 2020 for refusing to retract a research paper, and every single warning that paper made about large language models has now happened at a scale the industry spent 4 years trying to make people forget about.

#AIEthics #WeDontNeedNoAIEthics #WeAintGotNoStinkeenAIEthics

https://www.tumblr.com/dreaminginthedeepsouth/817865966907228160/darren-oconnor-timnit-gebru-was-fired-from?source=share

RE: https://social.vivaldi.net/@Vivaldi/116665745684315101

We are fully behind this!

Also social media should be fully human based, no misleading algorithms, no AI agents that try to act like humans but contribute nothing but slop, no advertisements, no tracking and no data selling

We stay human. We also take a stand.

Pasting a huge AI generated explanation to a problem in an issue or pull-request is nothing but RUDE. Don't do it. You look stupid and the receivers of that feel insulted.

We are humans. We communicate like humans. Fine, use the tools you like, but don't insult us.

“Move fast and break things.”

The things are you and me, our habitat, human rights, and democracy.

I just want it noted that I've never understood why pansies are used as an insult to mean soft or weak. I mean clearly the insult was conjured by someone who wasn't a gardener. Do you have any idea how hardy pansies are as a plant? They are fucking amazing. I've had pansies grow under the harshest of circumstances. I recommend pansies to everyone. They will generally grow for you, no matter what.