solarbird

May 1st General Strike

https://indivisible.org/campaigns/may-day-participation-guide/

One-day general strike, via Indivisible.

You in?

#fascism #politics #uspol #uspolitics

little more than a reading list (AI)

Here, two papers and two articles, all about AI, all I think better than most:

Researchers at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania are proposing an extended model of cognition as a way of measuring and studying “cognitive surrender,” the regular handoff of cognition to LLM models. It’s long but if you’ve got the patience, it’s here. I didn’t see much in the way of surprises, but it does provide an interesting framework for analysis.

One not-emphasised takeaway is that once again, the human intervention for wrong LLM responses model is shit. It’s not emphasised because that’s not the point of their paper – they’re demonstrating their model as an explanative/conceptual framework – but it’s still there.

Scientific American writes about a study showing that AI outputs tend to sway users’ beliefs, even when users are told about biases built into the model. As many – including me – have said many times before, this is absolutely part of the point of AI, particularly but not just for people like Elon Musk. But it’s good to see numbers on it.

Combine study two with study one and you see why the tech brogliarchs so eager to turn thinking into something they sell you. They don’t want to make your life easier, they want to make you pay to think like them. Or, as Karl Bode put it a few months ago, “The problem with AI isn’t going to be Skynet. It’s going to be amoral extraction class assholes applying half-cooked automation at scale onto deeply broken sectors in exploitative ways in a country too corrupt to have functioning regulators.”

Finally, give a look of the narrowly-focused (to coding) but still worthwhile essay, “I used AI. It worked. I hated it.” It strikes me that much of what he hated about it are what people who actually want to be managers like, which explains so very, very much, doesn’t it?

#AI

team shitstain bans new… home network routers?

I haven’t seen as much coverage as this as I’d’ve expected, but the MAGA FCC dropped a ban on new imported consumer-grade network routers late Monday by adding them as a class of device to the “supply chain risk” list. Maybe Ubiquiti? But they’re mostly business focused, and I can’t find where they’re made anyway.

You know your wifi box? That’s a router. If you have wired networking, you probably know that you have a router already.

I’m pretty sure banning new models of imported consumer-grade routers means banning all new models, since I don’t think anybody produces consumer-grade kit domestically.

Existing already-approved models can still be imported, as well as sold, according to the fact sheet. So it’s not that all routers are going to vanish off shelves tonight. But new models will need special approval.

It’s that feeling when you hope this is just a shakedown for more payoffs, right? When that’s the good option? That’s where we fucking are.

I guess somebody looked around and said “GPUs are impossibly expensive, memory’s impossibly expensive, storage is through the roof – but networking’s still cheap. LET’S FIX THAT”

jesus hopping christ can we have one day not completely trainwrecked by these goddamn clowns

Here, have the FCC statements. Honestly I don’t know what else to add. In any other situation, I’d just say this is some sort of trade bargaining chip, and in this situation I’m just hoping it’s a shakedown. But given that the shitstain’s role model, Vladimir Putin, has been pushing hard against internet functionality in general in Russia, I’m honestly wondering if this is groundwork for some sort of slow-build network communications shutdown.

And if you missed Putin’s actions in Russia – the west is mostly reporting it as actions against individual apps like Telegram, but it’s much more broad than that, and has included anti-Internet propaganda, complete with Sovietesque children’s musical numbers on television, singing about how “we don’t need the Internet.”

Fascist regimes always want control of communications, and, well, MAGA are fascist, so… is this part of that push? I have no way of knowing. But while I’m not saying definitely buy some spare equipment, you could definitely consider buying some spare equipment.

It might come in handy.

#fascism #murknet #takeThatIneternets #tech

@solarbird @slideruth@social.seattle.wa.us But yeah great to meet you too! I hope the event went well and maybe I’ll run into at the Shoreline tool library. I do show up there once in a while. ^_^

@solarbird @slideruth@social.seattle.wa.us THERE we go – I can reply to mentions from here! I just have to find it in notifications. (Using a WordPress site as a Federation instance works and a lot of it works well but some of it is just weird, which is why, well, all this. I just followed you from my Mastodon account, where things are more normal. xD

HHS employees, DO NOT OPEN YOUR EMAIL

HHS employees, DO NOT OPEN YOUR EMAIL.

Not without reading this first.

They’re going to cut off your network access as soon as you read your email, so you need to download a bunch of things first. Details at the link.

DO NOT OPEN YOUR EMAIL WITHOUT READING THIS FIRST.

See also the firings in the @luckytran@med-mastodon.com.

#datascience #fascism #medicine #politics #science #uspol #uspolitics