That is not what "free speech" means.
Posts by Michael Wojcik
12268 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Dec 2007
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'We hate what you’ve done with the place – especially the hate' Australia tells Twitter
Re: "Twitter appears to have dropped the ball on tackling hate,"
Since "insulting" is a subjective quale, any term can be intended (by the writer) as an insult, or inferred (by the reader) as one. For example: only an utter rutabaga would complain about being referred to as "cis".
So citing an example wouldn't prove anything; for it to be relevant you and LR would have to agree on an insulting interpretation, and one example isn't significant.
What LR's post does demonstrate, not that we needed more examples, is that many people are happy to take offense at just about anything if doing so confirms their worldview.
Re: Use another platform (sic)
The sentiments are not exclusive. I have never been a Twitter user myself, but if I were, I would include both complaining about abuse and considering a move to another platform viable options. In fact both can be exercised: I could file a complaint and then move, or file complaints while in the process of moving.
And it would be equally reasonable for me to suggest both responses to someone else unhappy with the platform.
Microsoft Azure OpenAI lets enterprises feed corporate secrets to ChatGPT
Re: “…many enterprises are integrating ChatGPT into their operational flow
I've yet to be impressed by any demonstration of an LLM that I've seen, and I've seen quite a few (particularly in papers and articles; I haven't wasted my own time with the things). Sure, they can produce banal natural text, and pulp-style illustrations, and other not-especially-good output, but the only actual utility I've seen is LLMs doing mediocre work for people too lazy to do better.
I've studied NLP as part of one of my degree programs and done some other ML work, and I've read quite a few of the LLM-related papers. I simply don't find unidirectional-transformer architectures or their results exciting. It's an inelegant, resource-intensive approach that's producing relatively little in the way of actually interesting new results, particularly given the massive hype and drooling excitement from the fans.
I'm not a big fan of deep-learning approaches in general – again, awesomely resource-intensive for the result, and not producing enough in the way of surprising results or new insights – but at least models like EfficientZero were trying to do something more novel than "throw a fuckton of hardware and data at the thing, optimize for shiny, and who cares what precision or recall or other metrics look like".
AMD's 128-core Epycs could spell trouble for Ampere Computing
A (cautionary) tale of two patched bugs, both exploited in the wild
It is strange. Last I looked (which was a while back) there were only one or two vendors selling home / small office routers with OpenWRT pre-installed. But the software the others use is full of FOSS packages already, so what's to be lost by getting rid of half your incompetent dev team and putting OpenWRT on instead? If you really think you need a "pretty" web interface, let the remaining incompetent developers (perhaps now incentivized to improve their skills and practices) build that.
Amazon Prime too easy to join, too hard to quit, says FTC lawsuit
Re: Yes! Yes!
For most things. There are a few things which I've had difficulty finding elsewhere. Even if I find a manufacturer site, it just rolls over to Amazon for purchasing.
But I've been avoiding Amazon as much as I feasibly can (and I prefer to buy locally anyway where possible). And I've never signed up for Prime. Yes, I recognize the "sign and cancel immediately" wheeze, but I don't want to give them the satisfaction.
Another thing I hate about Amazon: They'll rarely say how something will be shipped. We don't have USPS delivery to our home, and package services can't deliver to the Post Office, so I have to guess which address to provide. Often enough it's the wrong one and the item gets returned.
Re: There is a way to sign up for Prime in two clicks?
This is Yet Another reason to use virtual cards for online shopping. When each merchant has a dedicated card, canceling one is basically zero cost to you.
(I use privacy.com, but no doubt there are other providers. They block a few merchants, such as the gift-giving site my UK colleagues use for people's leaving gifts, but it works with most.)
Amazon confirms it locked Microsoft engineer out of his Echo gear over false claim
Re: What, no backup strategy?
Hey, if you don't have a backup strategy for global nuclear war or false vacuum collapse, there's really no point in having a backup strategy for your stupid "smart home" automation. Because all risks are equivalent and mitigating just one is completely pointless.
Honestly, GP here wins "Stupidest Argument in the Thread" award hands-down, and the bar was pretty high.
Re: no backup strategy, SMH stupidity
We have a fully mechanical doorbell – actually just a bell mounted outside the door – but in practice I don't believe anyone's ever used it anyway. When it's cold and the door's closed they knock; if it's warm and the door's open, they just call out. (I generally suggest to friends and neighbors that they could just let themselves in, as folks used to do, but in this era of ridiculous dangerism people seem reluctant to do that.)
Re: What, no backup strategy?
"I have a smart home, and my primary means of interfacing with all the devices and automations is through Amazon Echo devices via Alexa."
That's an odd way to spell "stupid home".
Oh, well. If this guy wants to make his living space an enormously overcomplicated, fragile engineering disaster with a huge attack surface, I suppose that's his prerogative. Personally I have better things to do with my time and money than go looking for trouble in the name of "convenience". (Particularly since "convenience" in this sense often primarily means less movement and thinking, in my experience, so you pay a price in health as well.)
Intel sprinkles 12-qubit quantum test chips into the hands of researchers
Recipient of Europe's largest ever seed round doesn't even have a product
US senators and spies spar over Section 702 warrantless surveillance
Re: 1 out of 280k
What? The article cited three times as many successes (eeeevil Chinese hackers targeting "an infrastructure company"; eeeevil Iranian hackers who were going to totally due a ransomware, dude; and getting some of Colonial Pipeline's money back, lest they learn an important lesson). That's better than 1%!
I believe the FBI's motto is "hey, we commit a lot of malfeasance, but occasionally we get results (of a sort)!".
Decision to hold women-in-cyber events in abortion-banning states sparks outcry
Florida man insists he didn't violate the law by keeping Top Secret docs
Re: What I cannot understand ...
Not even sucking up to him in those two cases, I think. Just the gladhanding that bullies do to useful-idiot flunkies: "Yes, we're both tough guys, aren't we?". Putin and Kim are both far more on the ball and certainly capable of manipulating someone like Trump by showing him mock respect.
Re: as did his aide Walt Nauta
You ask that as though you think it's a bad thing.
Sometimes good people go to prison. Sometimes they're innocent. Sometimes the laws they're convicted of violating are stupid or outrageous – the US has certainly had no shortage of those. Sometimes someone spent a term in prison and then reformed.
Conversely, many very bad people have never been to prison.
Using a prison sentence as an excuse to remove civil rights or as a proxy for mendaciousness is naive, foolish, irrational, and unethical.
There are many, many reasons why Trump should not be in a position of power. A future prison sentence, should that come to pass, does not change that; and making it do so by law (which would require a Constitutional amendment and Ain't Gonna Happen) would be an injustice.
FTC pulls emergency brake on Microsoft's marriage to Activision Blizzard
Re: Pity
I've never played anything released by Activision Blizzard, and I don't have any plans to do so in the future. But I still think this acquisition sounds bad for consumers and the industry. As the FTC points out, Microsoft has prior form in 1) engaging in anticompetitive behavior in this market, and 2) lying about it during the merger review process.
Surprise! GitHub finds 92% of developers love AI tools
This AI hype is enough to drive you to drink, lose sleep
Parker Solar Probe uncovers mystery of 'fast' solar winds
WFH mandates bad for staff morale and stunt innovation
Thousands of subreddits go dark in mega-protest over Reddit's app-killing API prices
Re: Search engines are pure torture right now
Hmm. It could use a well-documented protocol so anyone could write a server or client. It could make plain text the preferred means of expression, rather than encouraging all sorts of stupid formatting, pointless images, and emoji.
Nah, it'd never work.
Unsealed: Charges against Russians blamed for Mt Gox crypto-exchange collapse
I guess there is a difference between fantasy card games and financial services.
Of course this is something most middle-class Americans have yet to realize, though for most of them their fantasy cards are less "tap for extra mana"1 and more "tap for buying shit you don't need".
1Or whatever; I've never played MtG.
Will Flatpak and Snap replace desktop Linux native apps?
Re: Performance isn't free...
Yeah. Duplicating OS userspace is inelegant and wasteful. It's a lazy solution to a problem that wouldn't exist if library maintainers were more careful about compatibility, and application developers didn't feel a need to 1) bring in every bit of functionality they've ever heard of, and 2) use libraries for every trivial thing.
FBI: FISA Section 702 'absolutely critical' to spy on, err, protect Americans
Like a number of Reg readers, I was there on Usenet in 1990 when Mike Godwin proposed his eponymous law. And many of us chuckled. It seemed like one of those innocuous, humorous generalizations of Usenet culture, like Jo Walton's (later) "The Lurkers Support Me in Email".
But of course he was right, and we have no shortage of sophomores to demonstrate it. And generally those sophomores are ignorant of Godwin's real point: that by throwing around spurious comparisons, you not only say nothing of value, but you insult the actual victims of the Nazi regime (or whatever other atrocity you're handwaving toward) as well. Though the call for gratuitous violence is a nice addition. Certainly oppressive regimes never indulge in that!
I suppose what I'm saying is, do shut the hell up until you learn to think and communicate like an adult. Thanks.
Re: It does depress me
Sanders was hardly "shouted down". He had a credible run for the nomination. He also made numerous mistakes and did not make much of an attempt to broaden his base. He's not actually a terribly adept politician.
That's not to say the Democratic Party regulars aren't conservative. Biden won the nomination in 2020 largely because he was a familiar face who rode Obama's coattails, particularly with southern Democrats, and because of the perennial fear that a woman can't win the US Presidency.
Frankly, I'm not sure I'd describe anything Sanders was seriously proposing as a "major policy change". At least not more major than, say, getting the US out of Afghanistan or removing the right to abortion, or some other things which have happened without him in charge. And the POTUS is not an absolute monarch, either; there's not much a radical one can do against Congress and the courts. Carter tried to take on Reclamation and Congress – including his own party – walked all over him.
Re: It does depress me
But what it actually does, the FBI is no different to the Stasi.
Frankly, this is complete bullshit and quite offensive.
I'm by no means a fan of the US police and surveillance state, as I think I've made clear in other posts. I think the myriad policing and surveillance branches of both the Federal and state governments need to be sharply reined in. I think the FISA court is a joke. I'd like to see the entire PATRIOT Act tossed out. (I'd say I'd like to see the fairly dreadful Department of Homeland Security broken up, but the expense would be huge and I don't think it'd actually achieve anything.)
But without excusing any of the malfeasance of US policing at any level, it is nothing like what went on on East Germany, and to suggest that it is diminishes the awful experiences of people living under that regime, and is breathtakingly disrespectful to them.
You really need to learn to think critically.
GitHub accused of varying Copilot output to avoid copyright allegations
It's Microsoft, that has been their mode of operation since QDos, literally *before* Day 1.
Sure, if by "literally" you mean "figuratively", and by "figuratively" you mean "actually not at all, I'm just making up some bullshit".
Microsoft (founded 1975) is handily older than QDOS (written by Paterson in 1980).
Re: How close does code have to be?
Is one line of code copyrightable? How about 2? What amount of code, which is effectively just rewritten from the documentation of that language to achieve outcomes as documented, makes code copyrightable?
Gosh, if only similar questions applied to other works which are subject to copyright, and were discussed in both statute and jurisprudence.
Oh, wait, they do, and have been. In the US, some of those cases specifically regarding software are quite famous, such as Lotus v. Borland and Oracle v. Google.
Re: How close does code have to be?
I honestly have no idea what point you're trying to make with this argument, which seems pretty naive from the perspectives of economics, psychology, and aesthetics.
Software patently has both use-value and exchange-value.
As a non-physical, non-exhaustible, non-rival good, it has no unique-object value, sure. So what? Walter Benjamin pointed out almost a century ago that such "auratic value" no applies to most creative endeavors. Welcome to modernity.
People associate the experience with the product, and the qualia engendered by the experience attach to the product. We see that with video games, for example, which are definitely software and which many people form definite attachments to that go far beyond the experience of creating the game. (I haven't looked, but I'm sure there's plenty of Aeris/Tifa slash out there.) For more mundane software, there's certainly ample evidence of people making emotional investment in their preferred packages – just as they do for other tools.
Why can't Nvidia boss Jensen Huang escape the Uncanny Valley that makes AI feel icky?
Scientists claim >99 percent identification rate of ChatGPT content
if chatGPT actually had a discernable style
Unidirectional-transformer LLMs tend to end up in one of many, many "style basins" in parameter space based on the gradient traced by the context window. Remaining in that basin while generating text in that session helps verisimilitude, since human authors tend to a degree of stylistic consistency (as you saw in your own work, and has been observed all over the place basically since various cultures started developing their versions of rhetoric and literary analysis).
What the study described in the article shows is that populating the context window with a prompt for a particular type of scientific paper tends, with high probability, to land in a style basin that's detectably distinct from the style conventions that dominate in that genre. That's probably due to a combination of the imprecision of the model (ChatGPT has a lot of parameters, but obviously it's still very lossy; modern models have a lot more, so should have somewhat better precision) and the relatively small population of training texts from this specialized genre.
If you ask ChatGPT to write, say, Harry Potter fanfic,1 you'd probably get much better adherence to genre conventions.
1And I am not for a minute suggesting you do so, though I am reminded of Rowell's fine novel Fangirl now that I bring up the subject.
Google HR hounds threaten 'next steps' for slackers not coming in 3 days a week
it can be useful, and you interact with others more naturally than you would over Teams or whatever
For many people this is likely true. It's not true for everyone.
Personally, if my employer had an office near me (the closest is about a 5-hour drive) I would spend the occasional day there. I've worked from offices from time to time, and as recently as, oh, 30 years ago I was going to one regularly. I don't mind it, particularly if I can walk or take public transportation so I'm not wasting my time commuting. But generalizations about meeting in person will never be accurate for everyone, and by subscribing to any of them – from "better together" to "WFH is always best" – means discarding some of your potential talent pool.
"there's no question that working together in the same room makes a positive difference" means "DO NOT QUESTION IT".
It's the sign of religious doctrine, which is not surprising coming from the head of HR. People are notoriously variable and Taylorist scientific management breaks down quickly when those people aren't largely-fungible manual-laboring bodies. So HR at these big tech corporations can either be an art of acknowledging all of that difference and trying to find flexible systems for balancing corporate and human requirements; or it can be fierce adherence to an ideology with no acknowledgement of empirical data.
I think we know which is the case at Google, and many other tech firms. I'm not even convinced by the "middle management panic" explanation; I think it's almost entirely ideological.That's why we see these sweeping claims from the C-suite.
Re: That explains why productivity has fallen off a cliff due to "W"FH.
In some jurisdictions timesheets are useful for corporate-tax purposes. They're not necessarily just an invention of management.
Not saying that should make you love them or anything, just that the organization may have financial incentive to make employees fill them out. (Accurately or not.)
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