← Feed

Posts

• Copilot worm can spread through Microsoft Word docs

  Although there are a few ways to mitigate the risk, the only way to block it is to get AI to differentiate instructions from data, which is impossible today. “My view is that the broader challenge is therefore not simply to prevent systems from interpreting external content as instructions, but to evaluate whether those instructions align with the user’s goals and the context in which the system is operating,” he added. Problem hard to overstate Mike Wilkes, enterprise CISO at Aikido Sec...

• Post #4468433

  The level of incompetence that AI can mask is absolutely stunning. I had to explain to a senior embedded software architect that you need to use locks to access and change the same variable in multiple threads in concurrent C++ code.

• Post #4390686

  Ajit: More than anything else, I would challenge anyone who feels hopeless to be specific about what’s troubling them. This is obviously easier said than done, but if you take a couple of hours to write down what it is that scares you about climate breakdown, what makes you angry, and what leaves you feeling hopeless, the fears become (hopefully) easier to confront. In my case, reporting on the climate has made me way less worried about some problems and way more worried about others. In terms...

• AI homework tools cut exam scores by 20%, study of 26,000 Chinese students finds

• AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decisionmaking

  cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/63615439 The reality of how much damage AI mania is doing to our ability to run institutions effectively.

• Post #3983191

  Corporate suicide by AI?

• A Google engineer says AI has become sentient. What does that actually mean? (2022)

  Lemoine, who is also ordained as a mystic Christian priest, told Wired he became convinced of LaMDA’s status as a “person” because of its level of self-awareness, the way it spoke about its needs and its fear of death if Google were to delete it. He insists he was not fooled by a clever robot, as some scientists have suggested. Lemoine maintains his position, and even appeared to suggest that Google had enslaved the AI system.

• ‘This was a righteous case. A holy war’: the lawyer who took on Meta and Google – and won

• river, a non-monolithic wayland compositor

  An important difference between Wayland and X11 is that Wayland by concept combines window manager and compositor. That made it harder to write simple or experimental window managers for Wayland, such as StumpWM or i3. River is a compositor for Wayland that supports implementing a window manager separately, with an independent window placement paradigm, in an arbitrary language. Here is the wiki page listing window managers for river:

• You paid me, a long-time Linux user, to use Windows 11 exclusively for a month: here’s how it went

• Post #3881021

  We anthropomorphise so many things as part of language; not because we think they are human, but simply because it eases the use of language. The point is attributing capabilities to algorithms which they are not capable of, like “reasoning” or “lying”. Such sloppy use of language affects negatively our ability to talk and think about reality.

• 'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C, according to Greg Kroah-Hartman

  'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C, according to Greg Kroah-Hartman

• Canada is burning while Mark Carney tries to sell us on snake oil climate change solutions

• Execs Confused and Horrified by the Huge AI Bills After Thinking They Could Replace Workers for Free

• Virginia county asks all employees, including schools, to conserve power due to AI-driven electricity price hikes — state's 400-plus data centers steadily increasing demand, grid expansion, and prici…

• Companies Are Throttling Employees’ AI Use Because It’s Too Expensive

• Anybody Who Thinks Orbital Data Centers are a Good Idea Is Suffering from AI Psychosis, Experts Argue

• China is building 75 solar parks in Cuba, and the island’s power crisis is becoming an infrastructure experiment

  China is building 75 solar parks in Cuba, and the island’s power crisis is becoming an infrastructure experiment

• The Kessler Effect may Finally Be Happening, and Billionaires are to Blame 🛰️

  cross-posted from: thelemmy.club/post/51693846 Cross posted from thelemmy.club/post/51693681 Satellite launches have increased exponentially since 2020, and now space debris is increasing at a similar unbelievable rate, making the hypothetical Keppler Effect (also Kepler Syndrome) a very real possibility in the near future. As this material eventually deorbits and rains down into the planet, it vaporizes into metallic oxides like Aluminum Oxide (Al2O3) and toxic compounds, which poison th...

• Ford had to hire back former engineers to fix mistakes made by its automated systems

• The two worlds of programming: why developers who make the same observations about LLMs come to opposite conclusions

  cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/52842255 Have been working my way through this author’s essays, thought this one was a unique observation.

• European heatwave is worst ever and impossible without climate crisis, scientists say

• Practical software freedom with GNU Guix

• Commodore Callback 8020: Flip phone without browser, social networks, and 5G

  The manufacturer explicitly positions the device as a response to constant availability and what it considers problematic mechanisms of modern smartphone platforms. In conversation with heise, Commodore CEO Peri Fractic describes the Callback 8020 as a “not stupid dumbphone” for people who want to spend less time scrolling and more time in the real world. It is envisioned as a secondary device for staying reachable without being constantly exposed to the temptations of a smartphone with its noti...

• Bicycle and walkability advocates advance further

  cross-posted from: lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/44468757 cross-posted from: feddit.uk/post/51233473 Last night, New York City candidates who embraced the livable streets movement defeated those who did not 🎉🥳 GREAT NEWS!!! In Queens 🍍 Assembly Member Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas, who was endorsed by StreetsPAC, defeated incumbent Senator Jessica Ramos, who was very much not. 🍍 Pesach Osina, who was endorsed by StreetsPAC for his support for the QueensLink and for better bus service, won the p...

• Europe must choose between AI and climate goals, data center lobby says

  cross-posted from: feddit.org/post/31597508 Great timing and phrasing. “Be slow about slop development ooor… Burn everyone and everything!”

• Marcus Ranum: The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security [2005]

  This is an article that is now over twenty years old. And yet posting it seems like a worthwhile refresher for the “Agentic Age” … because very basic principles are being thrown overboard. One is: There has to be a clear separation between code that controls actions on your computer, and untrusted data. Looking at agentic systems - what do you see?

• Brit workers waste nearly six hours a week 'botsitting'

• AUR Registrations Blocked Amid Ongoing Malware Mess

• Post #3331614

  Using Linux is not a dick measuring contest (and man I hate these threads asking “why is your distro the best?” - it feels like trolling and sowing division and grief to me. A bit like asking a mother “What is your favorite child?”.) But apart from that, I think we can all agree that security of AUR packages is no good enough, and that this deficit is by design.