its_me_xiphos
@its_me_xiphos@beehaw.org
- Comment on We’re Training Students To Write Worse To Prove They’re Not Robots, And It’s Pushing Them To Use More AI 11 hours ago:
Which is a tragedy. Many reasons pertaining to why that is the exception.
- Comment on We’re Training Students To Write Worse To Prove They’re Not Robots, And It’s Pushing Them To Use More AI 16 hours ago:
You can still fake it. Have AI write the essay, you “write” a first draft and simulate edits here and there. You can also prompt AI to writer a first, seomcond, and third draft and detail changes. Then you manually make them.
This is a chance for teaching and grading to change. It needs to as the traditional methods which were failing from budget cuts, overuse of shit tools, etc, weren’t working. Put learning, not evaluation, in the class and you can avoid AI abuse. I am an N of 1, but go grab Frier, read pedagogy of the oppressed, and then start researching contract grading.
- Comment on We’re Training Students To Write Worse To Prove They’re Not Robots, And It’s Pushing Them To Use More AI 16 hours ago:
In my in person classes I used contract grading and weighed in class participation and case studies at 75% of their contract. The final was optional and was from a list of possible choices. I’d focus on providing mentorship and feedback, not grading them, simulating real world growth and learning. I had no AI problems and both I and my students generally loved it.
I taught one online class. It sucked. I hated it. Rampant AI and totally fabricated everything. Even reflection paragraph posts. I need to learn how to design an online class like my in person ones. Until then, never again.
Most of the AI users were student athletes. I can quantify this, so I’m not exagerating. They would miss classes for travel, turn in AI slop, and I would have to fail them over and over. That online class was 60% student athletes. I tried so hard to talk sense and be accommodating, but it was unabashed AI everything. It was bad.
The student athletes are getting more screwed than normal because they are just faking it through college and getting exploited by the NCAA for money.
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of March 8th 17 hours ago:
Foxhole, the Airborne update has been fun. I alsonreturned to Valheim just to do chill builds.
- Comment on Ethical alternative to Canva? 4 days ago:
I read through all the comments and responses. @harfang@slrpnk.net you need to make slides quick and easy using drag and drop and font layouts. That’s why you use Canva from what I can tell. So getting hardcore image manipulation is not necessary, nor collaborative style programs.
You can, with minimal effort, use Libreoffice Impress. Its PowerPoint without the Microslop. What this requires is you find a good source for properly licensed fonts and images, places like Pixabay and such.
You can use GIMP if you want to, but it reads like you just need to learn to use the tools in Impress. Again, GIMP is basically a Photoshop replacement. I’m not sure you need that.
Here is my work flow I used to make pretty slides and lecture decks that rely on prompts and imagery for students, not death by text:
-Outline in Libreoffice Writer. -Search for images on Pixabay, Unsplash, or Wikimedia Commons. -Search for, or use incorporated, fonts. Two to three font faces. -Build a draft presentstion in Libreoffice Impress -Set it down, walk away for a bit. -Return and edit as needed.
- Comment on Ethical alternative to Canva? 5 days ago:
I’m not sure if GIMP is an alternative if you’re looking for drag and drop?
- Comment on Firefox is adding a switch to turn AI features off 4 weeks ago:
Is there an alternative at this point? I tried Brave on a recommendation and its got AI integrated from default with opt out required.
- Comment on Vimeo Lays Off 'Most' of Its Staff, Allegedly Includes 'the Entire Video Team' 5 weeks ago:
That’s why Evernote went the way it did? Oh, that makes me sad. That was an incredible resource in grad school. OCR saved my ass on my PhD exams. Hand written notes, scanned at the library copier, organized and OCR. Immensely useful for a test (take home) that takes three days and covers two years of classes.
I stopped using it about 5 years ago because it just started to feel off. Little things not working or a UI change I didn’t like. Plus the pricing was restrictive in a way I couldn’t justify it anymore.
- Comment on Redditors Are Mounting a Resistance Against ICE 5 weeks ago:
Considering reddit is corporate bot slop now, I’m impressed they haven’t done a Zuck and shut it down.
- Comment on ChatGPT to start showing ads in the US 1 month ago:
Can’t wait for it to turn its latest travesty Suicide Goodnight Moon into an ad for rope.
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of January 12th 1 month ago:
BG3 done? Time for a new playrhriigh /u/Chloyster
I’m in 15th century Bohemia, galavanting the countryside and getting into trouble as Henry of Skalitz.
KCD2. I also just finished KCD1.
- Comment on Foreign tech workers spurn US as if it were a rabid dog 2 months ago:
Quite. I fear what this loss of empathy will mean for humanity.
- Comment on Foreign tech workers spurn US as if it were a rabid dog 2 months ago:
I’ll bite and share my experience. There is absolutely an issue. I’ve had applications for bank accounts denied, two people on hiring committees tell me I don’t belong here, a grant application simply withdrawn, another (confirmed insider knowledge) threw any application despite a valid work permit with any hint of US on the application into the trash. I have so many people ask me why I’m here, how I’m here, when I’m leaving. In professional settings and social. My partner, a entrepreneur, for the first time ever is having government entities stonewall her and representatives tell her off when she does any paperwork. She was in tears one day as she called to get some advice on a regulation and was told her business didn’t deserve advice. People. Are. Cruel. There is very little empathy left, and honestly, I get it. It’s not right, but I understand.
I want to integrate but there is absolutely an informal unwelcome mat being put in front of the door to Europe, and Canada.
I won’t be responding to posts as I am likely to get brigaded and trolled for writing the above. Americans wanting to get to safety, leave gun violence and fascism behind, and build a better world, are simply not welcome or have many barriers in place that didn’t exist before.
- Comment on Foreign tech workers spurn US as if it were a rabid dog 2 months ago:
As a US researcher (social sciences) who left, I warned my EU colleagues not to go to our big conferences. They were floored. Many thought it wasn’t that bad, but the selling point that worked is, “do you want to risk being on the wrong side of an unaccountable border agent who hates how you look?” A gulag, literally a fucking gulag in a foreign country, could await. Its not worth the risk.
However, context. What I dont appreciate about these articles is that they assume a broad ban on the US because of morals, ethics, national pride, or solidarity. Nope. It’s risk. Hubris and prestige of a career trump all other things. That simple. These same researchers still go to Hungary and Turkey. Its really discouraging to me as a critical theorist.
- Comment on Mozilla’s new CEO is doubling down on an AI future for Firefox 2 months ago:
You know, this makes sense. You are right.
- Comment on Mozilla’s new CEO is doubling down on an AI future for Firefox 2 months ago:
The issue I have with the responses are that forking or running lite browsers is not a solution but a work around. A work around that requires vigilance in the rapidly changing tech space. Most people can’t do that. It won’t result in systematic change that we need to stop enshitification. I’m not downplaying your work and a counter movement, far from it, but its simply not enough without more resources to stop the deluge of nonsense.
I dont have answers, and there are too many challenges to count to list here. From politics to how business schools teach. So we are stuck with a domineering overlord with both the resources to make it all look simple and fluid and to make the work of innovators increasingly difficult.
- Comment on Americans are holding onto devices longer than ever and it's costing the economy 3 months ago:
Kevin, if thats even a real person at this point in media, is just pushing stories and discourse aligned with corporate speak. Let’s consider it less stupid and more complicit, which I argue, is even worse.
- Comment on Americans are holding onto devices longer than ever and it's costing the economy 3 months ago:
I bought an older Samsung and only usenitnfor doom scrolling and podcasts. Its fine stripped down to nothingness. My.next purchase will be an older Pixel so I can run GraphineOS. I’m hopeful that like my Linux experience, buying old laptops and kicking windows to the curb in favor of Linux buys you tons of time and product life.
- Comment on Americans are holding onto devices longer than ever and it's costing the economy 3 months ago:
I am not an economist. I am not an expert on anything consumer. It is, however, plainly obvious that companies are trying to squeeze blood from a stone at this point. They can’t make money anymore with pay to own and innovation like they used to for a variety of reasons. From greed to enshitification. If you look at it with a different view, everyone is poorer because they are greedy, they’ve ruined everyone’s lives but must make numbers go up. So they find new and terrifying ways of screwing you over for diminishing returns. Like this. Relying on turnover sales and nothing else.
- Comment on The Job Market Is Hell: Young people are using ChatGPT to write their applications; HR is using AI to read them; no one is getting hired. 5 months ago:
Im going to start physical mailings and cold emails. I’m over this job market, its AI/ATS nonsense, and the people who think its OK.
- Comment on Perplexity wants to buy Google Chrome for $34.5 billion, twice the company's value 6 months ago:
Tree fiddy is the only price I’m willing to pay.
- Comment on Your CV is not fit for the 21st century 6 months ago:
I’m not quite sure how to jump into this, so here we go.
I’ve found myself unable to get new work but am in a position that I know my job is gone in 3 months. Academic, no funding.
I’ve been using Claude to parse through job postings and help me tailor a CV or resume. I never, if at all, even get a rejection email. I’m sad to say but leaving academia is going to likely be a survival issue. The prospect of having to get passed AI screeners is insane to me. AI is ruining so much in ordinary everyday life so rapidly that I’m frankly shocked…and I did climate disaster research so I’m hard to shock.
- Comment on How To Be Evil in RPGs When You’re a Chronic Goody-Two-Shoes 7 months ago:
I tried it in BG3 and just nopped out. I just can’t do it. Neutral at worst for me.
- Comment on Google Says AI Could Break Reality 1 year ago:
I’m not reading the article but instead trying to be amusing. If it breaks the reality, please put me in a new one with really good scotch, healthy knees, and a spirit of adventure!
- Comment on Is social media fuelling political polarisation? 1 year ago:
I highly recommend you visit your local library and request/check-out a copy of the book Polarization by Nolan McCarty. Read that.
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of June 23rd 1 year ago:
The epilogue is actually pretty damn good. Highly recommended.
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of June 23rd 1 year ago:
I’ve been playing Soulmask and enjoying it, but I need a break as the building in that game leaves a lot to be desired. So I’m returning to Baldur’s Gate 3. I can never bring myself to play Durge or evil aligned characters, but I’m going to try a class and character I’ve never considered and see how it goes.
- Comment on Advice - Getting started with LLMs 1 year ago:
Month later update: This is the route I’ve gone down. I’ve used WSL to get Ollama and WebopenUI to work and started playing around with document analysis using Llama 3. I’m going to try a few other models and see what the same document outputs now. Prompting the model to chat with the documents is…a learning experience, but I’m at the point where I can get it to spit out quotes and provide evidence for it’s interpretation, at least in Llama3. Super fascinating stuff.
- Comment on Advice - Getting started with LLMs 1 year ago:
I really appreciate all the responses, but I’m overwhelmed by the amount of information and possible starting points. Could I ask you to explain or reference learning content that talks to me like I’m a curious five year old?
ELI 5?
- Submitted 1 year ago to technology@beehaw.org | 26 comments