i don’t understand how people see the xz incident and conclude that open source is insecure. That level of social engineering could easily have worked on a company as well, but it was detected because it was open source. All other mechanisms failed, and it was just some random guy poking around that discovered it. That kind of scrutiny doesn’t happen on closed source systems
Let’s be honest, if you’re a software engineer, you know where all this compute and power consumption is going. While it’s popular to blame #LLMs, y’all know how much is wasted on #docker, microservices, overscaled #kubernetes, spark/databricks and other unnecessary big data tech. It’s long past time we’re honest with the public about how much our practices are hurting the climate, and stop looking for scapegoats https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-staggering-ecological-impacts-of-computation-and-the-cloud/
Dear God, don't confront me with the footprint of the steak in my freezer. It's probably as much as my laptop's emissions in a year. Knowledge is power but self-awareness can be a tough row to hoe sometimes.
@kellogh the first thing that I would do to cut those consumption would be to shut off all things blockchain. These really waste a lot of energy without providing proper value.
"Properly designed solar installations can increase food #harvests, reduce the need for #irrigation, revive dying lakes, rescue #pollinators, restore #soils + cool overheated humans—all while producing more power than conventional solar arrays."
"In 1982, researchers @ the #FraunhoferInstitute for Solar Energy (ISE) in Germany proposed a... solution..."
The solution to our current #drought problems in many areas might have been with us for 2,300 years at least, probably first developed by the #Tiahuanaco culture of the #Andean...
What a great reminder that simply being “data driven” isn’t enough. If the model is wrong, your results are going to be bad. In other words, there’s no substitute for critical thinking, not even data
in the first hour of this #iran attack, i saw the word “unprecedented” probably 12 times, and i can’t figure out for the life of me what’s unprecedented about this situation
@benroyce lol, exactly. today was also unprecedented in that i woke up and 3D printed a toy helicopter for the kids, but that does seem like abuse of the term since it’s hardly the first time i’ve made toys for them
a sad trend i’ve noticed is old school #opensource people sell out to their extremely high paying big tech jobs and their dialog around open source becomes legalistic and focused more on things like software licensing and they completely lose the zeal of building in public, for no other reason than to gift others with an interesting idea
@kellogh (serious question, I refused a almost 7 figure job earlier last year to stay at my low 6-figure one, first world problems for sure), what is worth it in that money to sell out (of course assuming you are reasonably secure right now)?
I could pay off my mortgage and sleep soundly that I'd probably be able to avert any crisis happening in the family, but it was not worth my soul (working for someone I despise on something that probably wouldn't be very interesting).
this morning on the run i got to the top of the hill and was resting, bc i'm out of shape, and off in the distance i see a bird trotting my way
as it gets closer i realize it's a turkey. it had a big red gobbler and its neck was iridescent. It was actually really pretty, so i just watched as it approached
i’ve seen plenty of apex predators on the trail. bald eagles, black bears, moose, also rattlesnakes and copperheads. never have i been so scared as with that turkey. i can still feel the sudden shift from awe to terror as it got a bit too close.
A new paper offers a system to correct misinformation using an #LLM. The approach seems solid, and the results seem strong. I haven’t dug in deep yet, but I’m hopeful about this one
The biggest hole, assuming this actually works, is identifying potentially misleading remarks
This is typically done with a layered approach — one or more “pre-filter” steps have an extremely high TP (true positive) rate of identification. Each step along the way has a progressively better FP (false positive) rate and also progressively more expensive to run
So the end answer might involve LLMs for identification, but only in the final steps
I just found out about birb, and it makes me extremely excited for the future of #opensource, the #fediverse and #rsstech. With the combination of deeper RSS integration and fossil, my mastodon client optimized for reading, 2024 is looking pretty good rn https://timkellogg.me/blog/2024/01/03/birb#rss
@kellogh related to Fossil, and algo timelines / catchup… I use a combination of @murmel_social (to see the most popular links from my home timeline over a period of time), and Fediview from @adamghill (to see engaging posts I might have missed). I totally understand the strong concerns many folks have around algorithmic timelines, particularly when the algorithm is opaque; I love the option to choose and use different tools in this space. Thanks for Fossil, looking forward to digging into it 👏🏻
@kellogh Nice! That idea of custom algorithms behind #fossil is something I always wanted to see in #Mastodon.
I'd love to be able to set several timelines up with different algorithms, and having a plug-in ecosystem for that would be awesome. I think this is the next big step for #socialmedia.
whelp, someone thought "web root" is a good name for a security product, and someone else thought it would be a good idea to force install it on all their employees machines. wtf is wrong with people....
@kellogh just checked. webroot.com is a legit website and the company is based in the UK. I know the Brits have a sense of humor which is satirical but in this case it is taken too far, lol.