@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

lord_tacitus

@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social

Just a creature, most vile and wretched, pay it no mind.

Deep love of #maths, #art, video #games, #film & #television (especially #animation), #FOSS, and #TTRPG's.

Anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, anti-colonial, anti-fascist, anti-religion, anti-bullying.
Pro-LGBT, pro-vaccine, pro-Ukraine, pro-Palestine, pro-choice, pro-science, pro-vocative, pro-crastinator.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

davidrevoy, to random
@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org avatar

Size test with open comic fonts.

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@davidrevoy

That's a funny thing to ask a talking potion.

Honestly though it's perfectly legible on my phone using fedilab.

MrLovenstein, to random
@MrLovenstein@mastodon.social avatar

Secret Panel HERE 💔 https://tapas.io/episode/2275320

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@MrLovenstein

I 💊 this comic!

gamingonlinux, to random
@gamingonlinux@mastodon.social avatar

OpenAI say it would be 'impossible' to train AI without pinching copyrighted works https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/01/openai-say-it-would-be-impossible-to-train-ai-without-pinching-copyrighted-works/

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@gamingonlinux

Like I've been saying for many, many years now: If a company can't operate while obeying the law then they shouldn't operate at all. No corporation has a right to exist, if Facebook can't run their business if forced to moderate their platform, then they should shut down, if OpenAI can't operate without violating copyright then they should shut down.

gamingonlinux, to random
@gamingonlinux@mastodon.social avatar

Every time. Where did it go?

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@gamingonlinux

One of the best things I've ever bought is one of those magnetic tray things, not only can you chuck stuff in and they'll just stick but you can pick it up and sweep it across the floor for just such an occasion, they've really saved me a bunch of times.

Chrishallbeck, to random
@Chrishallbeck@mastodon.social avatar

I wonder what people that work on the opening title sequence for streaming tv series think about the “skip intro” button.

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@Chrishallbeck

I thought the exact same thing when I first saw that... But I do appreciate it for anime though, those intros go on for literally 2 to 3 minutes, no matter how good they are that's a lot to sit through for the seventh time.

jasongorman, to random
@jasongorman@mastodon.cloud avatar

Where does this idea come from that a "software developer" is just a "code monkey" but a "software engineer" has a wider focus? I'm seeing it a lot these days. It's a bullshit distinction, IME. I was a "software engineer" in the mid 90s. Haven't called myself that since.

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@jasongorman

A "software engineer" is someone who works at a company that calls their programmers "engineers".
A "software developer" is someone who works at a company that calls their programmers "developers".

warandpeas, to random
@warandpeas@mastodon.social avatar

Greedy Old B*tch

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@warandpeas

That absolutely floored XD

masukomi, to random
@masukomi@connectified.com avatar

Today in AI bullshittery:

Nvidia has trained an LLM on their codebase to save senior designers having to answer junior's questions about what some code does.

I don't know how many times i have to say this, but these are not search engines. They are not inference engines. Their answers are 100% "what would be a plausible sounding string of words to respond to that input?" that's it. That's all they do.

1/2

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@masukomi

What's wrong with that? How else would you speak with ghosts in the shell... stand alone complex 2nd gig?

ZachWeinersmith, (edited ) to random
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

Does the word "cyborg" imply in particular a human-machine combination?

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@ZachWeinersmith

I would say that without any other qualifiers yes it refers to human hybrids but you could have dog cyborgs or horse cyborgs as well, but just saying e.g. "I saw a cyborg" means you're talking about a human one.

eater, to random
@eater@cijber.social avatar

real name policies are so american lma

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@eater

On a related note: there was a time right up through the early 2010s when I, an Irish national with an Irish name living in Ireland, couldn't use my actual/real/legal/whatever name on many Irish websites because they used some off the shelf American validation library that thought "oh no, names can only consist of one uppercase ASCII letter followed by three or more lower case ASCII letters". My last name starts with O' like a vast number of Irish people.

MrLovenstein, to random
@MrLovenstein@mastodon.social avatar

Secret Panel HERE 🐶 https://tapas.io/episode/1688294

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@MrLovenstein

Kinky Kirby

whitequark, to random
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

hate it https://foundation.rust-lang.org/news/member-spotlight-helsing/

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@whitequark

Oh for christ sake, not another one these companies that refuse to say what they actually sell and just drool marketing speak. Put aside the military aspect, and put aside the ai. Can anyone tell me one product they sell and what it does? "Defending democracy" is not a process, it's a goal. How do you actually do that? Their website sounds like "we'll do an ai to make your country gooder, pls gib munny".

molly0xfff, to ai
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io avatar

excuse me what the fuck

#AI #AIEthics #TechEthics

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@molly0xfff

Gross, but entirely expected.

lord_tacitus, to climate
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

An excellent video about the problems with many Kurzgesagt videos and the economy-first approach to that states we solve it with even more consumption and relying exclusively on the development of new technology. It points out how Their videos insidiously belittle and undermine the movement. It also pulls in , , and .

I won't spoil the big reveal at the end, but it really shows where Kurzgesagt's values lie.

https://youtu.be/uCuy1DaQzWI

j_kloiber, to random German

Must-read! @pluralistic on why “Open” “AI” isn’t.

“Openwashing is the trick that large "AI" companies use to evade regulation and neutralizing critics, by casting themselves as forces of ethical capitalism, committed to the virtue of openness.”

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/18/openwashing/#you-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@trashpanda_x @pluralistic @j_kloiber

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Wealth of Nations is a hell of a lot closer to Das Kapital than it is to Atlas Shrugged.

grumpygamer, to random
@grumpygamer@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

"Predatory land grabs mount in the ashes of Maui"

Of course they do...

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@grumpygamer

Good old Crassus the elder, back at it again.

LeviKornelsen, to random
@LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

Louis Porter Jr is a dude that makes RPG stuff, and... Is also someone who is proud to pay some of his freelancers a penny a word, and brag about how well he's doing financially and how crap others are.

And that... That is "Drag this fucker across the WHOLE internet" kinds of bullshit, in my book.

One screencap below, a whole bunch more on Facebook at:

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02yLYNNUYLuNGMaL21FLFDEAxiAjjqd8qD6UwAYqY7iH4BLN5GptV1kVuxPGGYf8Tcl&id=100000607526420

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@LeviKornelsen

Just to put things in perspective:

This guy would have paid Tolkien about four and a half grand for the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy.

That's less than two and a half months minimum wage.

LOTR took twelve years to write.

gamingonlinux, to random
@gamingonlinux@mastodon.social avatar

Hot take: I honestly don’t get reaction videos. I find them super cringey and don’t understand the pull to them.

“Oh yeah let’s watch someone make faces at something someone else did” 🤣💩

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@gamingonlinux

I like reactions by experts e.g. those ones with the professional voice coach reacting to actors playing characters with accents or professional composers reacting to a musical score. But "some guy making faces at thing" has no value at all.

Chrishallbeck, to comics
@Chrishallbeck@mastodon.social avatar

Remember.

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@Chrishallbeck

I resemble this remark!

eniko, to random
@eniko@peoplemaking.games avatar

I've seen every popular blocklist on twitter and even simple labeling devices like shinigami eyes wind up used to silence innocent minorities who got too mouthy for the maintainer so please keep that in mind when people say they don't trust blocklists. It's not because they "like the bad people", it's because they always inevitably go off the rails and become weaponized against the people they're meant to protect and basically never have any oversight or recourse

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@eniko

As always, There's no silver bullet, no quick fix, no one size fits all answer.

Anyone telling you they have an easy answer for all scenarios is a fool or liar.

Giving some third party with no oversight absolute control over who you are able to interact with is a recipe for disaster. It's better to wait for a problem and deal with it there and then on a case by case basis with the relevant context than to try and proactively prevent possible issues.

baldur, (edited ) to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

So, I’ve said this before in the context of AI research but it applies to so much more than that:

  • Always be sceptical about research backed by large companies.

  • Be extra sceptical about research backed by tech cos

  • Always assume that research, backed by a tech co, that has a conclusion that’s beneficial to the company, is just outright false until replicated by an impartial third party.

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@baldur

So wait. You're saying I shouldn't believe the report on the health benefits of tobacco published by Philip Morris?

ZachWeinersmith, to random
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

Do you think better AI will change the way we store files? Meaning basically, right now you make specific folders and ideally nest them so you can locate stuff. But maybe in the future everything just goes in a bin and you say "hey AI, get me that one file about the thing"

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@ZachWeinersmith

Only if you're willing to permanently lose some files because the algorithm can't find them. Machine learning isn't some magical miracle juice that can solve all problems. If anything it might be possible to use it to augment existing workflows, not replace them.

gregeganSF, to random
@gregeganSF@mathstodon.xyz avatar

The idea that you can take an LLM — trained on an undisclosed dataset of all kinds of text, and tweaked by human feedback for various messy goals — and then use its responses for social science “research” rather than using real people, is beyond stupid.

https://www.science.org/content/article/can-ai-chatbots-replace-human-subjects-behavioral-experiments

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@gregeganSF

Ah yes, the "making shit up" model of research.

aeva, (edited ) to random
@aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

Do you have a lucky USB port on your computer?

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@aeva

No but I do categorise them so e.g. this is for USB sticks, this one is for peripherals, this one is exclusively for game controllers etc.

sundogplanets, (edited ) to random
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social avatar

Usually I tell people I study Kuiper Belt Objects, because that name is more easily recognized by the general public. But today I have learned that I can make Those People cringe just by saying the more proper name.

So, I study Trans-Neptunian Objects.

lord_tacitus,
@lord_tacitus@mastodon.social avatar

@sundogplanets
You mean like Pluto? Which we used to call a planet until we learnt more about it but there still some people too stubborn to update their nomenclature? Which scientists have come to understand that continuing to call it a planet would be asinine and ignorant of so much of reality?

Not sure why I felt to need to bring that up, of course you know all that, it couldn't possibly be a reference to something else.

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