its_me_xiphos
@its_me_xiphos@beehaw.org
- Comment on ‘The era of invincibility is over’: the week big tech was brought to heel 4 hours ago:
Wtf is uo with the Guardian lately and these headlines? They are invincible. That fine is a pittance. Thats a get out of jail free card.
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of March 29th 4 hours ago:
Dropped KCD II after they replaced localization translators with AI.
Back to BG 3!
- Comment on Solar is winning the energy race - The world’s cheapest power source is scaling at warp speed, pushing coal, gas and nuclear aside 1 day ago:
Holy crap. Do you live in a bitcoin server farm? Thats insane.
- Comment on US bans any new consumer-grade routers not made in America 3 days ago:
I’m calling it now - Palantir and others of their ilk will be the ones leading this nonsense.
- Comment on Palantir CEO Makes Shocking Confession on Disrupting Democratic Power 6 days ago:
Circling around to say I thought about this over the last four days. In brief, my perspective that you can have a surveillance apparatus and a contemporary democracy in the 21st century were misguided. You are right.
- Comment on Palantir CEO Makes Shocking Confession on Disrupting Democratic Power 1 week ago:
That’s a fair set of arguments.
- Comment on Palantir CEO Makes Shocking Confession on Disrupting Democratic Power 1 week ago:
That’s a good read, thank you for sharing. I do not believe that a lack of privacy and surveillance are a given. You can have a strong Democratic state with surveillance, if you have strong privacy guarantees and the means to enforce them.
This is a much larger discussion, but your article and point are well taken.
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of March 15th 1 week ago:
Valheim again. I need some calm meadows music.
- Comment on Explain it like I'm 5: Why is everyone on speakerphone in public? 2 weeks ago:
The future is now fellow old man (my joints hurt just typing this). If it helps, I remember the comforting noises of a 14.4k modem connecting me to the world wide web.
- Comment on Palantir CEO Makes Shocking Confession on Disrupting Democratic Power 2 weeks ago:
Take anything Palantir says about democracy as either a dog whistle or a threat. Palantirs product is mass surveillance and criminal behavior prediction (location, whereabouts, movement patterns). That’s authoritarian, but not necessarily antidemocratic. You can still vote and be a democracy withass surveillance, don’t conflate it.
Where the anti Democratic comes in is using that surveillance to prevent people from exercising their right to vote and manipulating their information so they vote how you want. That’s what Palantir is enabling.
Its nuts on accurate their name is in spirit. Almost commendable.
- Comment on Palantir CEO Makes Shocking Confession on Disrupting Democratic Power 2 weeks ago:
A Labyrinth reference? Glorious.
- Comment on Android: sideloading blocked and open source updates withheld to twice a year 2 weeks ago:
Reading this makes me realize how ignorant I am on all things tech.
- Comment on Explain it like I'm 5: Why is everyone on speakerphone in public? 2 weeks ago:
The Kardashians and any reality show that needs to showcase a phone call for the audience. That is exactly how this all got to the level it did. People who watched and were raised on that media learned to use a phone like that and do.
That’s my theory.
- Comment on We’re Training Students To Write Worse To Prove They’re Not Robots, And It’s Pushing Them To Use More AI 3 weeks 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 3 weeks 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 3 weeks 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 3 weeks ago:
Foxhole, the Airborne update has been fun. I alsonreturned to Valheim just to do chill builds.
- Comment on Ethical alternative to Canva? 3 weeks 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? 3 weeks 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 1 month 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' 1 month 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 1 month 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 2 months 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 2 months 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 3 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 4 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.