TehPers

Ironically, it felt to me like the post deified algorithms itself, but this is the main takeaway:

We should neither mystify, nor deify these systems, because it makes us forget that we have built them ourselves and infused them with meaning.

An “algorithm” is nothing more than a set of instructions to follow to complete some kind of task. For example (and closely related), a sorting algorithm might attempt to sort a list by randomizing the list, then checking if it’s sorted and repeating if not (bogosort).

Lemmy uses an algorithm to sort posts by “most recent”, for example, and I think that having a “most recent” sorting option is noncontroversial.

Where algorithmic feeds become problematic, in my opinion, is when they start becoming invasive or manipulative. This is also usually when they become personalized. Lemmy, Reddit (within a subreddit), and other kinds of forums usually do not have personalized feeds, and the sorting algorithms for “hot” are usually noncontroversial (maybe there’s debate about effectiveness, but none usually about harm). Platforms like FB, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, YT, etc all have personalized feeds that they use personal data to generate. They also are the most controversial, and usually what is referred to as “algorithmic” feeds.

These personalized feeds are not magic. They often include ML black boxes in them, but training a model isn’t sorcery, nor are any of the other components to these algorithms. Like the article mentioned, they are written by people, and can be understood (for the most part), updated, and removed by people. There is no reason a personalized feed is required to invade your privacy or manipulate you. The only reason they do is because these companies are incentivized to do so to maximize how much ad revenue they make off you by keeping you engaged for longer.

The EU can start by finding a way for full-time open source contributors to make a living off it. Solve that problem, and you’ll have plenty of open source projects, as well as open source devs who want to move there.

It’s used outside of UK too. I’ve seen it used in the US, for example. Usually it’s just a corporate term that says “you’re fired” but without saying that. They use terms like these all the time to try not to take accountability for fucking someone’s life up.

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If you already know some programming languages, look for some kind of GUI or game library for it to see if you can use it. If not, something like Blender might be easiest to make in C++, Rust, C (if you’re a masochist), or maybe Zig. This may also influence the shading language you choose. Start with this.

You will need to know some shader language. You have a few options there, but the most popular are GLSL and OpenGL (though I’d prefer GLSL). There’s also WGSL and some others, but they aren’t as popular. Prefer whatever the graphics library you’re using wants you to use.

Math is very heavy on linear algebra. Look up PBR if you want to render realistic 3d shapes. Google’s Filament is well documented and walks through implementing it yourself if you want, but it’s pretty advanced, so you might want to start simpler (fragment colors can just be base color * light color * light attenuation * (N*L) for example).

The US envoy to the European Union spoke with the same tone last week, claiming that even the poorest US states, such as Mississippi or West Virginia, now enjoyed a higher standard of living than Germany.

Could have stopped here, to be honest. This statement by the envoy is so absurdly false that it can’t even be claimed to be hyperbole. A better comparison would be Mississippi and South Sudan.

It’s one of the major supermarket chains in NL, which I guess isn’t that obvious to most people, but I miss shopping there because the chains where I am have rotten, moldy produce and AH always had fresh produce and packs of relatively cheap stroopwafel.

Also, related to the post, I’d almost rather be sweeping the floor there. I don’t want to sweep floors, but it’d mean I live there, so yeah.

Ok, ignoring the rest of this comment…

i don’t use capitals by principle bc i am an anarchist and keep it to a minimum to level out all hierarchical systems of control and make you realise these language rules are all social conditioning.

This is wildly unhinged to me. Not the anarchist part, but that I’m supposed to somehow infer this all from the lack of proper capitalization.

Look, I don’t really care if people follow grammar rules or capitalization, and I ignore them on most platforms myself. But I really don’t think it’s this deep, at least for most people.

Anyway, the video is appreciated yes, but the post came across the wrong way since it basically read like keyword soup. It’s better to share videos with a description of the video or some personal commentary on it so that people know what they’re going to watch (or not watch, especially for Youtube links which some will avoid).

I’m not surprised at all that removing distractions like social media could “feel their focus sharpening”.

To answer the title, I could not go without my phone because I need it to authenticate to stuff.

The biggest issue with Youtube is that it has no real competition, at least for traditional long-form content. They have no incentive to improve the user experience.

Correction: ICE has murdered a citizen unlive on camera.

The author seems to be more interested in generating outrage than anything, but I think the point about AI still stands. From a UX standpoint, key points that may be incorrect are a terrible idea. That they originally intended to force AI on the user, at least from how it seems, is problematic.

The author’s privacy and accessibility concerns seem artifical to me.

Looks like mostly SteamOS users, which isn’t too surprising. Hopefully we can see that number go up over time as people get sick of Windows.

Slightly off topic, but it looks like they reopened the forums!

The feature was introduced as a way for users to get relevant information faster, by providing them with an image, the webpage title, and AI-generated key points.

The AI part was made optional. That doesn’t mean they didn’t try.

Zen figured out link previews without using AI and the solution is really as simple as it gets. Maybe stop trying to manufacture problems for AI to solve?

what fucking authority did Donnie have to do this to begin with?

You see, he hates brown people, and doesn’t care if they come from Latin America or the Middle East. So I guess that’s his authority.

To his credit, that has worked before with previous presidents too.

This is often how it starts, sadly. Maybe by 2050 the rest of us plebians can get access to it (not that I need any new teeth right now, and hopefully not before 2050).

Surely you have an example where it’s appropriate for a service to generate nonconsensual deepfakes of people then? Because last I checked, that’s what the post’s topic is.

And yes, children are people. And yes, it’s been used that way.

Edit: as for guardrails, yes any service should have that. We all know what Grok’s are though, coming from Elon “anti-censorship” Musk. I mentioned ChatGPT also generating images, and they have very strict guardrails. They still make mistakes though, and it’s still unacceptable. Also, any amount of local finetuning of these models can delete their guardrails accidentally, so yeah.

When someone clicks the “edit” button, I guess.

Ok yes you’re right. “Grok generate me some CSAM” is the same as opening up a photo editor and drawing a new real looking body onto someone’s child and putting it in a new body position. Same exact thing. No different at all. Twitter has no responsibility for running a service that can do this.