If you're against unrestricted genAI then you're also transphobic

What. Wait has anyone claimed this? Because that's absurd.

Man the Pistol unicode mess has always given me mixed feelings

Apple indeed lead the design change, but they did it unilaterally without the input of Unicode. So the standard is still saying that the character represents a pistol, and all the fonts are ignoring that to have it a squirt gun instead, so as to be compatible with a specific Apple font rather than compatible with unicode.

It might have been a mistake for Unicode to introduce Pistol in the first place (I wonder how it was chosen, can't look that up right now), Pistol apparently came from Softbank, so Unicode was probably including it for compatibility with existing encodings.

IMO it would have been technologically more sound for UI designers to hide it in a UI or font designers to omit it entirely, than to replace it with another graphic with significantly different meaning. Emojipedia demonstrated the potential for confusion with this cheeky text message example.

Of course by this point we're stuck with water gun so Twitter is just needlessly adding to the mess and Unicode should give up and redefine or add errata to the symbol.

My joke didn't land apparently but I did not mean to imply they were particularly good at technical explanations. Adjusted the working a smidge.

If HN is best at technical discussion that just means they're even worse at everything else!

In 2024 it is, at the very least, extremely uncomfortable to read Searle describe Chinese writing as "meaningless scribbles", "formal symbols"*, "squiggle squiggle", and "squoggle squoggle". Basically taking Chinese, ignoring the fact that it's a real language used by real people and is not alien nor inscrutable nor mathematical, and using it as a prop to purposefully obfuscate a thought experiment.

But that's like, just my opinion man.

* The paper never seems to get around to calling English letters symbols I wonder why.

Aeronautic Seating Layout Randomization.

Thanks now you've sent me down the rabbit hole since I searched for this and clicked on the first ad: coderabbit.ai

One of the code reviews they feature on their homepage involves poor CodeRabbit misspelling a variable name, and then suggesting the exact opposite code of what would be correct for a "null check" (Suggesting if (object.field) return; when it should have suggested if (!object.field) return; or something like that).

You'd think AI companies would have wised up by this point and gone through all their pre-recorded demos with a fine comb so that marks users at least make it past the homepage, but I guess not.

Aside: It's not really accurate to describe if (object.field) as a null check in JS since other things like empty strings will fail the check, but maybe CodeRabbit is just an adorable baby JS reviewer!

Aside: the example was in a .jsx file. Does that stand for JavaScript XML? because oh lord that sounds cursed

I'm now on two completely separate on-call rotations (as a programmer, rather than an IT person proper), and only being paid extra for a fraction of one of them. All this on top of being in charge of way too much code.

Haven't quit yet because honkin' big silicon valley mortgage and all, and if I'm driven off I want severance gosh darn it. Unfortunately my company also can't fire me because like you I'm a single point of failure. I will quit if things end up too annoying though.

Someone will have the "brilliant" idea to fix this by having chatbots review code in 5... 4... 3...

This person likes the idea of electronic surveillance

It would not be possible for students to be coached specifically for an AI assessment, because the assessment would be happening in the background, over time, without necessarily being obvious to the student.

And by that I mean she really likes the idea of electronic surveillance

Imagine a classroom setting ten years hence where data about each learner’s movements, speech and facial expressions is automatically logged by passive capture devices within the fabric of the classroom. This information is combined with data about each learner’s performance recorded by the school’s assessment system and the teacher, parents and learner themselves. All this data is used to update the class teacher’s pupil records and to provide data for an AI-based teaching assistant that keeps track of every learner’s cognitive, emotional and meta-cognitive progress.

Why? To decide how quickly to ship the struggling students off to the minimum wage jobs, no vetting required!

The AI assistant [...] can identify and contact local entrepreneurs who are willing to come and talk to pupils about future work opportunities or how to be an entrepreneur.

Edit: also holy smokes this document is hard to read. It feels like trying to swim through thin air. I didn't realize it was possible to say so little with so many words, and that's saying something as I've had the misfortune of reading chat-gpt output.

We know $10 USD may not seem like enough to reclaim the internet with the browser we barely maintain and take on irresponsible tech companies that pay us vast sums of money. But the truth is that as you read this email, hundreds of Mozilla supporters worldwide haven't realized we're a charity racket dressed up as a browser who will spend all your money on AI and questionable browser plugins. And when each one of us contributes what we can, we can waste the money all the faster!

With the rise of AI (you're welcome, by the way, for the MDN AI assistant) and continued threats to online privacy like question like integrating a Mr. Robot Ad into firefox without proper code review, the stakes of our movement have never been higher. And marks supporters like you are the reason why Mozilla is in such a strong position to take on these challenges and transform the future of the internet in any way we know how -- except by improving our browser of course that would be silly.

(I'm feeling extra cynical today)

Man I can't even laugh at this one it just makes me feel melancholy.

Google also said something similar in one of their reports. Something along the lines of sure AI wrecked their sustainability report this year, but just you wait until it optimizes the data centers! As if the robots could find holes in thermodynamics or something.

Anyway it's not that great but here's my attempt at the sneer you asked for:

"Additionally, we are exploring how attaching flame-throwers to the bottom of private jets and flying over the tree-tops of forests can further increase the accountability and traceability for our Scope 3 carbon emissions."

You just reminded me I actually did write a bouncy rocket mod for Jedi Knight 2 (which used a modified Quake 3 engine). Bouncy rockets are so much "fun", easy to implement, and obvious to think of that I'm surprised more games haven't had them.

My friend designed a few levels for Jedi Knight 2. One in particular had a hidden room with a button that would trigger a giant wall of death slowly lowering from the ceiling across the entire level K.O-ing everyone else. I was never really good at level design but I thought the process of building 3D worlds in an editor and then pressing a button to bake in the light and shadows was super beautiful.

Ok this might be a bit petty of me but, yes this HN comment right here officer.

A group pwns an entire TLD with a fair amount of creativity, and this person is like (paraphrasing) "if you think that's bad news just wait until you hear AIs can find trivial XSS and SQL injections 😱".

Aside: have I ever mentioned here that you should really stick with .com / .net / .org / certain country domains? Because this sort of stuff is exactly why. Awful.systems can get a pass since the domain name is just that good.

Speaking of data loss, I once had just finished a physics lab assignment in OpenOffice and planned to print it off and walk to the University, 4 miles away, shortly.

Unfortunately an extremely confusing quirk of the OpenOffice file "recovery" UI meant that I clicked the wrong button and it helpfully deleted my document for me. I then spent the next hour learning Linux file recovery from scratch including finding and compiling a data recovery tool from source and learning about inodes.

In the end I managed to recover everything except for the images embedded in the document, hastily recreated them, and then ran the four miles to the university (my body would not be able to take that today haha)

Oh gosh I feel like my "early days of getting into computers" lasted for like 10 years and involved a bunch of false starts and setbacks so I have a bunch of memories haha. It's almost a miracle (or a curse...) that I ended up as a professional programmer in the end.

Early on me and my friend accidentally made the windows "My Documents" folder disappear on the elementary school's computer lab's computer by messing with the desktop.ini files. Good times.

Another time I was in a computer summer camp and we were playing with Text To Speech in Visual Basic and I had the great idea to play the string "XXXXXXXX" at full volume. I learned then that this sounds exactly like a robot saying "sex sex sex sex sex..."

Anyway fast forward to middle school and I had stubbornly settled on C++ because I wanted to make Spyro The Dragon and vaguely knew that serious games were programmed in C++. I went to an after school computer club run by a volunteer parent who really really liked HP Calculators. Everyone got a demo disk with an HP graphing calculator emulator (programmed by the instructor himself), qbasic and a few other things (I wish I still had that). The final assignment involved guiding a mouse through a maze using HP graphing calculator assembly language. The prize for completing the assignment was a copy of Visual C++ 6.0, as the instructor had wrote to Microsoft and asked if they had any copies they could give away.

So there I am with the ominous task of trying to teach myself C++ with no guidance. I type in a simple "Hello World" program. The compiler segfaults because I had a typo. It took me from then all the way until my second attempt at university to actually learn C++ properly. But dang once it clicked it clicked, now I can do wild wild stuff with the language because I've brute forced my way through learning every possible stupid way you can mess up.

If I knew it would take so long, and more importantly if I knew I'd never get to program a Spyro The Dragon-esque game and that Silicon Valley was so soul-sucking, I never would have stuck with it.

Previously discussed here at https://awful.systems/post/2182339

I apologize for posting this link for those who click it and read

Yeah I was being a bit tongue in cheek there. I follow them and a bunch of accounts on ActivityPub because it's the only way to keep the feed from drying up when running my own instance.

Taylor Swift is on the side of humans* in the battle against the AIs (instagram).

Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.

I'm sure everyone remembers what this is referring to, y'know with the rest of the US election being so low-key and boring, but just in case here's an article with screenshots (Guardian).

Anyway I'm not here to talk politics. SwiftOnSecurity (spoiler: probably not actually Taylor Swift) thinks Taylor Swift will be a "cultural linchpin" against deepfakes.

As I've said before, Taylor Swift may be the cultural lynchpin for addressing abusive AI imitation and I think this was her personal opening salvo. Taylor Swift was previously driven to political advocacy partly by right-wing memes of her aping Hilter on genetic purity. I think she takes INCREDIBLE personal exception to herself being used as a puppet and this directly aligns with it. Directly addressed to political leaders.

Indeed that Donald Trump post isn't the first time she's been targeted. There was Deepfake Swift Porn in January that prompted Microsoft to add more safeguards**. A scam involving fake Le Creuset cookware (nytimes), and on a lighter note: fake Taylor Swift teaching Math on TikTok (Petapixel, whatever the heck a petapixel is).

The January incident prompted some legislatures to introduce the No AI Fraud Act, though looking at it it looks like it hasn't made it far through congress.

* Maybe not on the side of humans against climate change. With the private jet and all. God the US needs trains then at least all the celebrities could ride in luxurious rail cars like the olden days.

** Not sure about Microsoft but these safeguards aren't effective in general, I found a subreddit of people sharing AI image generator prompt tips to get around filters and it was pretty disturbing. But that's another story.