Links (26 August 2024)
– Baldur
Bjarnason
- “TBM 308: No Unforced Errors - by John Cutler”. At times it feels like my career is nothing more than a series of unforced errors on my part, one after another, and then getting occasionally 😅
- “Why JavaScript variables don’t always update”
- “Erika Hall Knows How to Fix Your Design Process (But You’re Probably…”. “I’ve been reading Behave by the neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky. He argues that people put things in categories, just for convenience—and even if that category is arbitrary, they forget that it is. They treat it like it’s something that’s real.” And… “If you work in design today, 80% of your job should be that. It should be talking to people. And then once you’ve done that, and a concept emerges, you can spend a little time making stuff.”"
- “Is the Open Source Bubble about to Burst?”. “This has been the perennial problem for open source: how can it be sustainable for the people who build it?”
- “‘Megalopolis’ Marketing Consultant’s Lionsgate Ties Cut Over Trailer Debacle”. “But we hear that the quotes featured in yesterday’s trailer, revealed by Vulture to be fake, were found to have been generated by AI following an investigation.” Of course they were. And, as somebody on Bluesky pointed out, that everybody immediately assumed it was AI shows how strongly associated the term is now with bullshit and fabrications. We don’t need the term “slop”. The public has decided that plain “AI” means the same thing and will do nicely.
- “Copilot AI calls journalist a child abuser, Microsoft tries to launder responsibility – Pivot to AI”. “These were stories Bernklau had written about. Copilot produced text as if he was the subject. Then Copilot returned Bernklau’s phone number and address!”
- “Microsoft’s Copilot falsely accuses court reporter of crimes he covered”
- “A Prominent Accessibility Advocate Worked With Studios and Inspired Change. But She Never Actually Existed. - IGN”
- “I’ve got the genAI blues – Computerworld”. “We might, believe it or not, already be at peak AI as far as quality goes. Isn’t that a scary thought?”
- “What About Static Typing in Ruby? – Noel Rappin Writes Here”. “And so on… you get the idea. The point is that the more complex the code, the more likely you are to need other data validation. And any other data validation is almost by definition going to be a superset of the static typing, so the separate value of static typing drops.”"
- “What About Static Typing in Ruby? – Noel Rappin Writes Here”. “Static typing does prevent simple errors, but in even a moderately complex case, you can’t count on it for all your data validation needs.”
- “Spoiler Alert: it needs to be accessible | scottohara.me”
- “Betting on AI will take Scotland backwards not forwards – Bella Caledonia”. “Any hope of a responsible AI is blown out of the water by the other ethical disasters that are built into it, including the dependency on taking data without asking, on exploited labour in the global south to massage all the data, and the control of AI by Silicon Valley billionaires with very dubious visions of the future.”
- “Five Things: August 22, 2024 — As in guillotine…”. “if the world as we know it is coming to an end, spending those last days somewhere you truly love is at least worth considering, no?” Absolutely, yes. This was one of the thoughts that led me to move back to Iceland after living twenty years abroad. No regrets.
- “AI Tech Giants Hide Dirty Energy With Outdated Carbon Accounting Rules - Bloomberg”
- “The overshoot myth: you can’t keep burning fossil fuels and expect scientists of the future to get us back to 1.5°C”. “Despite some claims to the contrary, the global energy transition is not in full swing. In fact, it hasn’t actually begun because the transition demands a reduction in fossil fuel use. Instead it continues to increase year-on-year.”
- “The overshoot myth: you can’t keep burning fossil fuels and expect scientists of the future to get us back to 1.5°C”. “Climate change is dangerous because of weather that affects particular places at particular times. Simply put, this extra heat is making weather more unstable. Unfortunately, having temperature targets makes solar geoengineering seem like a sensible approach because it may lower temperatures. But it does this by not reducing, but increasing our interference in the climate system. Trying to block out the sun in response to increasing carbon emissions is like turning on the air conditioning in response to a house fire.”
- “Weak Ankles and AI: an extended metaphor – KJ Charles”. “The plagiarism engine is not a substitute for pinning your plot to the page and forcing yourself to break it down and take a hard look at the structure. It will not help you learn to analyse your own work. It won’t give you experience in polishing a sentence till it sparkles. It cannot substitute for reading in your field.”