Wow I've never seen enshittification mentioned by a politician. Glad to hear it's getting inside the Overton Window.

I sympathize, I also feel like the fight against the corporations is hopeless. The loss of leverage against employers for tech workers is huge in the face of LLMs. I'm a tech worker myself and am facing those same problems. But I'm not sure that this means that FOSS is useless. The corps have a huge incentive to create these tools, whether they're open source or not. But at least when they're open source, we the people can also use them. I'm not suggesting that we can do this with LLMs today, we just don't have the right contributor and maintainer tools to do it. But right now we have to develop maintainer tools to filter out the huge amount of crap that badly designed LLM systems are putting out. This gives us the opportunity to build a contribution model that doesn't care about human vs LLM provenance, as long as it meets certain quantifiable standards. In 5-10 years, we're going to have LLMs that can infer at very high speed, meaning we can do a lot of error correction by multiplying the number of generations you make and looking for consistency. The engineering effort for LLM systems is barely started, these systems are gonna get way more robust. Wouldn't it be better if these systems were built in the open so that we can all share, understand and leverage these tools for ourselves?

As for the gatekeeping/democratizing of art and tech, I agree that anyone can learn that stuff if they put enough effort into it. But by the simple fact that people need to put time and sweat into it, it disqualifies a large swath of the population, from children to neurodivergent people to low wage workers who don't have the breathing room to rest let alone take up programming. It's really not about a 'soldier at the gate', no person or group is preventing anyone from learning how to code. The social order and biology sometimes makes it so. Wouldn't it be better for everyone if anyone could modify their software without having to invest a shitload of time to learn how to code? Like maybe this person only wants this one specific change in one specific app-- the ROI just isn't there if they have to learn a whole new field.

I am not trying to say that AI and LLMs are the next best thing since sliced bread. I think there's huge problems with it, but I also think that they can be powerful tools if we wield them properly. I think there's big limitations on the tech, and huge ethical implications about the way they're built and their cost to the planet. I'm hoping that we can fix these in the long run, but I sure as fuck don't count on the current AI industry leaders to do it. They're going to use this tech to supercharge surveillance capitalism, imo. It's gonna be fucking horrible. What I hope is that we can carve out a space for personal computing with the help of FLOSS.

I agree that with the current state of tools around LLMs, this is very unadvisable. But I think we can develop the right ones.

• We can have tools that can generate the context/info submitters need to understand what has been done, explain the choices they are making, discuss edge cases and so on. This includes taking screenshots as the submitter is using the app, testing period (require X amount of time of the submitter actually using their feature and smoothening out the experience)

• We can have tools at the repo level that can scan and analyze the effect. It can also isolate the different submitted features in order to allow others to toggle them or modify them if they're not to their liking. Similarly, you can have lots of LLMs impersonate typical users and try the modifications to make sure they work. Putting humans in the loop at different appropriate times.

People are submitting LLM generated code they don't understand right now. How do we protect repos? How do we welcome these contributions while lowering risk? I think with the right engineering effort, this can be done.

Unless you have a balanced diet that anticipates your workouts and gives you the proper amount of sodium, potassium and magnesium. Sports drinks are just selling you those at a big premium. Stick with water. Eat a banana.

Isn't it the opposite then? Since your windows will have vertical scrolls, it makes sense to tile them horizontally in order to maximize vertical space for each window, imo.

I don't know, the person was trying to get it to output defamatory things. They got to print what they wanted to print.

The failure of the bot to provide the action is a separate issue which wouldn't have made the news. It's not like they were trying to get help and it instead started insulting its own company, right?

This feels like the equivalent of "I was able to print 'HP Sucks' on an HP printer". Like, yes you can do that, but... why is that important or even needs to be blocked?

Thanks! I had actually gotten confused by the Create Post interface and accidentally did not post the URL to the blog post heh. I fixed it now

These are very poor arguments for smoking cigarettes, but sure...

Another argument to give your tween a smartphone is that they need to learn how to use it, to develop a healthy relationship with it, to understand the pros/cons, to understand how to use it effectively. Abstinence will just make them envious and less likely to think through the consequences.

I'm a fan of Frasier as a show, I'm not a fan of Kelsey Grammer as a person. He's just a meat puppet asked to say lines, he is not equivalent to the show.

There are lots of people who could use them. Schools, libraries, poor people.

What do you mean? I follow a lot of hashtags on Mastodon. Won't I be seeing a lot of Threads content if I'm on a server federated with them without explicitly opting into that?

It was just an example. The same can happen at the Mastodon-level instead of the Fediverse-level. Since there is some desired interop (e.g. between Mastodon and Lemmy), services do influence each other in their feature set.

I'm not sure what you mean by "a lot of what people are worried about Threads doing has already been done by Mastodon". Do you mean that the decisions that Mastodon make influence the rest of the Fediverse? If so, let's make sure we understand the difference here: Threads has a much more hostile disposition. Mastodon seems to have incentives aligned with the rest of the Fediverse services, and probably deserves the benefit of the doubt; Facebook has abused that benefit time and time again.

This is more a question of tolerance. We know Facebook is NOT tolerant of competitors, of the open web, of free software, etc. They cannot survive as a megacorp without a level of assurance and control that they can't have if they're "just another fediserver". They WILL try to wrangle control. They WILL try to eat us all up. Why let the fox in the henhouse when you already know it's a fox?

That doesn't actually fix the issue. If Facebook is trying to set itself up like Chrome with the webplatform, or GTalk with XMPP, then they will drive the feature set of ActivityPub, whether you're federated with them or not.

Hypothetical example:

Want to see this picture/video from someone on Threads? You need Facebook's proprietary picture format, which has DRM baked in it. Even if you don't federate, Mastodon, Lemmy, etc now have to take energy away from their work to adopt the proprietary picture format. It depends on the proportion Threads takes on the network and how they can leverage that position to put pressure.

Threads currently has voice notes. Should all ActivityPub services support that? If so, do we adhere to Threads' standard or not?

I get ya. I think there's also a petulant sentiment of "you don't want to play fair? Then fuck you, I won't either"

No no, that is not what the headline says.

The headline says "you're told that what you're doing is buying by the people selling you the media, but that's not what you're actually doing. So, if they're lying to you about what you're buying, then pirating a different thing isn't stealing the thing they are trying to sell you."

It's definitely tongue in cheek and has some hyperbole in it, but that is the gist of the statement.

Agreed, and to me the solution is not "let's hope the companies play nice", but rather to bring in anti-monopoly regulations, like Canada's Bill C-56.

We need to force companies to add interoperability, transparency and fairness imho. Like the ongoing fight to force Apple to allow competing browsers in iOS. Or alternate app stores for Android and iOS.

Ah, that's not my understanding of civil disobedience. I prefer this definition: "civil disobedience is a public, non-violent and conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in laws or government policies" (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/civil-disobedience/)

I suppose the piracy aspect might not be public enough to count as civil disobedience though, unless you count as public the noticeable cumulative effects of all piracy.

There's lots they can do...

• cheaper prices (by lowering the % of rent-seeking),
• better pay distribution for creators (Especially so that I pay to support the shows I watch rather than a global pool),
• interoperability (to allow new businesses which provide frontends to multiple streaming services),
• social (clipping and sharing, group watching, etc)
• more equal promotion of shows/movies (instead of based on royalty rates)

I was under the impression that there were resources in that area that the US currently has privileged access to because of their alliances there. So they have a stake in making their allies come out on top.

How much should they be paid for it? In a situation where the streaming services have a stranglehold on the market and are extracting a big amount in rent-seeking price vs actually paying the people who labored to create it, should we continue to pay and give in to their morally dubious tactics? In this lens, can piracy be considered a form of civil disobedience?

I'm not so sure that's true. What if normalizing and removing friction from piracy gets to the point where the streaming services have to react by providing better services and better payouts?

Cory Doctorow writes extensively about how it's Spotify's fault, as an extension of the common exploitation of musicians in the industry, in the excellent book Chokepoint Capitalism. Here's a short summary of the Spotify argument by the author: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ5z_KKeFqE

I'm not sure what you mean. GPTs also allow you to add datasets, and external APIs. Both of which can be used to supply a spiritual pov.

No.

It seems like they have an automatic lab that tested 58 of them and 41 were successfully synthesized. So 70% success

It does more than that, it magnifies, feeds and perpetuates them. It's not just simple exposition.

What kind of advice were you looking for if not this?

I agree that the technologies did pan out, but I don't think it's an ignorant opinion.

I also feel blasé about the new battery articles because they tend to promise orders of magnitude changes rather than incremental change. Batteries did get much better, but it doesn't really feel that way I suppose. Our experience of battery power hasn't changed much.

It's really about getting excited about the article or the tech, it takes so long to see its mild effects that there's no real cashing out on the excitement, so it's not very satisfying.

OP sounds like he's making a data compression pitch, but I think you have the better idea. I think surrounding the picture with a lot of contextual data about when/why/how this picture was taken will absolutely help recall and connecting to related concepts.

Essentially, you don't ask them to use their internal knowledge. In fact, you explicitly ask them not to. The technique is generally referred to as Retrieval Augmented Generation. You take the context/user input and you retrieve relevant information from the net/your DB/vector DB/whatever, and you give it to an LLM with how to transform this information (summarize, answer a question, etc).

So you try as much as you can to "ground" the LLM with knowledge that you trust, and to only use this information to perform the task.

So you get a system that can do a really good job at transforming the data you have into the right shape for the task(s) you need to perform, without requiring your LLM to act as a source of information, only a great data massager.

I've been using LLMs pretty extensively in a professional capacity and with the proper grounding work it becomes very useful and reliable.

LLMs on their own is not the world changing tech, LLMs+grounding (what is now being called a Cognitive Architecture), that's the world changing tech. So while LLMs can be vulnerable to bullshitting, there is a lot of work around them that can qualitatively change their performance.

"It has already started to be a problem with the current LLMs that have exhausted most easily reached sources of content on the internet and are now feeding off LLM-generated content, which has resulted in a sharp drop in quality."

Do you have any sources to back that claim? LLMs are rising in quality, not dropping, afaik.

Or flatpak

And hopefully this will allow them to follow the 80/20 rule where the AI can do 80% of the grunt work and the human can concentrate on the 20% creative part.

Agreed. It's such a disingenuous argument. It's the usual casting of poor people as lazy, and what they need is a good lashing to get them to work.

Like... No. People want dignity. People want to feel satisfied in their lives. UBI trials have shown that they use that money to get the life/jobs that they want. They're just not gonna be forced into shitty jobs as you said. This last bit is the part not said out loud.

I summarized the two readings of the bill. (Claude AI did, really)

The first speech from the Sponsor (February 8, 2022)

Senator Pate gave a speech introducing Bill S-233, which would create a national framework to implement a guaranteed livable basic income program in Canada. She argued that poverty is a major social issue that needs to be urgently addressed. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated income inequality and disproportionately affected marginalized groups. A guaranteed livable income could improve health, social, and economic outcomes for low-income Canadians.

The speech outlined how poverty puts people at greater risk of poor health, food insecurity, and homelessness. COVID-19 has spotlighted these vulnerabilities, as lower-income groups have suffered higher mortality rates. Senator Pate cited research showing guaranteed income pilots reduced hospital visits and improved participants' health. She argued a national program is feasible, building on existing supports like the Canada Child Benefit. Costs could be offset by reducing other programs and realizing savings in areas like healthcare.

There is growing momentum for guaranteed income, with support across party lines. Public opinion also favors it. Senator Pate positioned the bill as responding to decades of calls to action on poverty reduction. She appealed to fellow Senators to stop perpetuating myths about poverty and act boldly to implement this long-overdue policy. The speech was a compelling case for guaranteed income as a powerful tool for promoting equity and dignity.

The Response (April 18, 2023)

Senator MacDonald responded to Senator Pate's speech introducing Bill S-233, which would create a framework for a guaranteed basic income (GBI) program in Canada. He commended Senator Pate's advocacy for the poor, but expressed concerns about the bill's lack of detail and fiscal implications.

Senator MacDonald outlined analyses questioning the affordability and sustainability of a GBI program. He cited research suggesting it could cost hundreds of billions annually, require tax increases, and reduce work incentives. Senator MacDonald also noted provincial studies concluding GBI is too costly and ineffective for poverty reduction compared to targeted measures.

Given Canada's debt and deficits, Senator MacDonald argued the country cannot realistically consider implementing GBI currently. He contended the solution is generating wealth through natural resource development, not expanding welfare states. Senator MacDonald suggested Conservatives could support GBI to replace current programs if fiscal conditions improve under a future Conservative government.

In conclusion, Senator MacDonald maintained Conservatives oppose Bill S-233. While GBI aims are laudable, he believes the bill's lack of detail and Canada's finances make it unrealistic presently. He advocated defeating the bill or sending it to committee for further scrutiny.

Discussion last Tuesday (Oct 17)

I'll put up a summary of the transcript once it becomes available or if I can extract it from the video.

Looks like maybe the note is down? I just get an empty list :(