Owen
@owen@mastodon.transneptune.net
mastodon
4.5.9
Turnaround time on interesting suggestions/questions: between 2d and 2y.
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Joined July 14, 2017
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Owen
@owen@mastodon.transneptune.net
Turnaround time on interesting suggestions/questions: between 2d and 2y.
mastodon.transneptune.net
@aphyr Anonymous light weirdoes who give away their code are less predictable along those axes, but _way_ more likely to behave predictably along the axes of design, function, completeness, and correctness.
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Owen
@owen@mastodon.transneptune.net
Turnaround time on interesting suggestions/questions: between 2d and 2y.
mastodon.transneptune.net
@aphyr LLM boosters will resort to the idea that I should trust Anthropic, or OpenAI, or Microsoft, the way I trust some anonymous weirdo. That is a perspective I _categorically_ reject because I know those organizations' behaviours. I do trust them, but I trust them to screw me as hard as possible as soon as they can, and no further, because that is what they consistently do.
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Owen
@owen@mastodon.transneptune.net
Turnaround time on interesting suggestions/questions: between 2d and 2y.
mastodon.transneptune.net
@aphyr
Code generated from a statistical model carries none of the understanding and none of the care that weirdo could bring to bear. Furthermore, there's no weirdo - nobody whose perspective I can evaluate, or about whom I can make "does this work" and "is this likely to do something surprising" trust decisions. The only option is to review all of the output myself, in lieu.
Code generated from a statistical model carries none of the understanding and none of the care that weirdo could bring to bear. Furthermore, there's no weirdo - nobody whose perspective I can evaluate, or about whom I can make "does this work" and "is this likely to do something surprising" trust decisions. The only option is to review all of the output myself, in lieu.
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Owen
@owen@mastodon.transneptune.net
Turnaround time on interesting suggestions/questions: between 2d and 2y.
mastodon.transneptune.net
@aphyr > … Right?
The question I keep finding myself coming back to is, whose time and whose understanding am I relying on, and what is my relationship to them?
I use libraries because there are problems I either don't know how to solve myself, or because I don't think it's a good use of my time to solve them myself. Figuring out a light control protocol is probably in both categories - I'd rather have someone who is Weird About Lights write that code.
The question I keep finding myself coming back to is, whose time and whose understanding am I relying on, and what is my relationship to them?
I use libraries because there are problems I either don't know how to solve myself, or because I don't think it's a good use of my time to solve them myself. Figuring out a light control protocol is probably in both categories - I'd rather have someone who is Weird About Lights write that code.
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Owen
@owen@mastodon.transneptune.net
Turnaround time on interesting suggestions/questions: between 2d and 2y.
mastodon.transneptune.net
@xgranade This is the pettiest of complaints but _right off the bat_ the author gets their folk history badly wrong.
I have a lot of complaints about the Eternal September framing in general, but forgetting that it was Eternal because it was the _general public_ getting access (through AOL, principally) and only September because it reminded old-timers of the annual new student rush, is appalling.
Grr argh.
I have a lot of complaints about the Eternal September framing in general, but forgetting that it was Eternal because it was the _general public_ getting access (through AOL, principally) and only September because it reminded old-timers of the annual new student rush, is appalling.
Grr argh.
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Owen
@owen@mastodon.transneptune.net
Turnaround time on interesting suggestions/questions: between 2d and 2y.
mastodon.transneptune.net
@aphyr The LLM-mediated information future you describe, convincingly, and the LLM-mediated information future companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are advancing, are predicated on the written word being eminently disposable - not just forgotten after a few minutes, but irrelevant almost as soon as it's read, or heard via TTS.
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Owen
@owen@mastodon.transneptune.net
Turnaround time on interesting suggestions/questions: between 2d and 2y.
mastodon.transneptune.net
@aphyr Mulling on New Media a bit: _books_ - even in the amputated form of a Substack or a LinkedIn Thinkpiece - represent the idea that the written word has some inherent value, something that makes it worth collecting in durable form. _How_ durable varies greatly - Tolstoy or Tacitus might be read centuries later, while a Linkpiece forgotten after days - but it's always there.
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Owen
@owen@mastodon.transneptune.net
Turnaround time on interesting suggestions/questions: between 2d and 2y.
mastodon.transneptune.net
Take a long breath. Remember that someone is getting paid to persuade you that their pet technology is The Future and that Everyone Is Using It But You. Remember that that's just advertising - an intrusive and noxious kind even against the intrusive and noxious baseline, but still just advertising.
Do something that matters to you instead.
Do something that matters to you instead.
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Owen
@owen@mastodon.transneptune.net
Turnaround time on interesting suggestions/questions: between 2d and 2y.
mastodon.transneptune.net
RE: https://woof.group/@aphyr/116323747530229471
One of the functional outcomes - I might, cynically, call it an intentional one - of these bills is to raise the barrier to entry for running a social service on the internet.
The incumbents and the financiers backing explosive-growth venture startups can afford compliance resources that a community admin can't, and these bills are characteristically long on compliance obligations.
One of the functional outcomes - I might, cynically, call it an intentional one - of these bills is to raise the barrier to entry for running a social service on the internet.
The incumbents and the financiers backing explosive-growth venture startups can afford compliance resources that a community admin can't, and these bills are characteristically long on compliance obligations.
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Owen
@owen@mastodon.transneptune.net
Turnaround time on interesting suggestions/questions: between 2d and 2y.
mastodon.transneptune.net
@aphyr I don't think Discord has any real chance of becoming a Streaming Platform for Gaming the way twitch did, that market is pretty saturated and being accessible outside of the platform-app is a huge selling point for literally anyone but Discord, but they're trying anyways and making their product worse to use in the process
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Owen
@owen@mastodon.transneptune.net
Turnaround time on interesting suggestions/questions: between 2d and 2y.
mastodon.transneptune.net
@aphyr case in point on getting worse: voice chat now has its own attached streaming and chat service, _within discord_, that is disruptive if you're trying to just join a voice call. Whatever you were doing, you now need to click back to, whereas the UI used to stay where it was when you joined a call.
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Owen
@owen@mastodon.transneptune.net
Turnaround time on interesting suggestions/questions: between 2d and 2y.
mastodon.transneptune.net
@aphyr What people like: they already have it (mostly from when it was less bad), voice chat works and is relatively pleasant to use, infinite scrollback
when it was aiming to replace roger wilco and teamspeak I think it was a clever and well-designed product, but then they won that fight and still had to Grow.
when it was aiming to replace roger wilco and teamspeak I think it was a clever and well-designed product, but then they won that fight and still had to Grow.
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Owen
@owen@mastodon.transneptune.net
Turnaround time on interesting suggestions/questions: between 2d and 2y.
mastodon.transneptune.net
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Owen
@owen@mastodon.transneptune.net
Turnaround time on interesting suggestions/questions: between 2d and 2y.
mastodon.transneptune.net
Someone on Mozilla's blog just said the quiet part out loud: https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/115951178170456830
The enterprise Firefox product can be differentiated from the version offered to the public in terms of whether it is or is not a data collection surface.
The enterprise Firefox product can be differentiated from the version offered to the public in terms of whether it is or is not a data collection surface.
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