There was an article by Google about the security of their code base, and one of their core findings was that old code is good, as it gets refined and more free of bugs over time. And of course conversely, new code is worse.

https://security.googleblog.com/2024/09/eliminating-memory-safety-vulnerabilities-Android.html

Generally it seems like capitalism’s obsession with growth is at odds with complex software. It’s basis in property also.

it’s the sort of tool that is really just fundamental now and should be ubiquitous and promoted and taught and talked about every where there is knowledge work. Even more so as there’s a great open source version of the tool.

Oh yea I hear you.

Thanks!

Yea, the “cheaper than droids” line in Andor feels strangely prescient ATM.

Not a stock market person or anything at all … but NVIDIA’s stock has been oscillating since July and has been falling for about a 2 weeks (see Yahoo finance).

What are the chances that this is the investors getting cold feet about the AI hype? There were open reports from some major banks/investors about a month or so ago raising questions about the business models (right?). I’ve seen a business/analysis report on AI, despite trying to trumpet it, actually contain data on growing uncertainties about its capability from those actually trying to implement, deploy and us it.

I’d wager that the situation right now is full a lot of tension with plenty of conflicting opinions from different groups of people, almost none of which actually knowing much about generative-AI/LLMs and all having different and competing stakes and interests.

Just recently read your 2017 article on the different parts of the “Free Network”, where it was new to me just how much the Star Trek federation was used and invoked. So definitely interesting to see that here too!

Aesthetically, the fedigram is clearly the most appealing out of all of these. For me at least.

It seems though that using the pentagram may have been a misstep given how controversial it seems to be (easy to forget if you’re not in those sort of spaces). I liked the less pentagram styled versions at the bottom. I wonder if a different geometry could be used?

Yea I know, which is why I said it may become a harsh battle. Not being in education, it really seems like a difficult situation. My broader point about the harsh battle was that if it becomes well known that LLMs are bad for a child’s development, then there’ll be a good amount of anxiety from parents etc.

Yea, this highlights a fundamental tension I think: sometimes, perhaps oftentimes, the point of doing something is the doing itself, not the result.

Tech is hyper focused on removing the “doing” and reproducing the result. Now that it’s trying to put itself into the “thinking” part of human work, this tension is making itself unavoidable.

I think we can all take it as a given that we don’t want to hand total control to machines, simply because of accountability issues. Which means we want a human “in the loop” to ensure things stay sensible. But the ability of that human to keep things sensible requires skills, experience and insight. And all of the focus our education system now has on grades and certificates has lead us astray into thinking that the practice and experience doesn’t mean that much. In a way the labour market and employers are relevant here in their insistence on experience (to the point of absurdity sometimes).

Bottom line is that we humans are doing machines, and we learn through practice and experience, in ways I suspect much closer to building intuitions. Being stuck on a problem, being confused and getting things wrong are all part of this experience. Making it easier to get the right answer is not making education better. LLMs likely have no good role to play in education and I wouldn’t be surprised if banning them outright in what may become a harshly fought battle isn’t too far away.

All that being said, I also think LLMs raise questions about what it is we’re doing with our education and tests and whether the simple response to their existence is to conclude that anything an LLM can easily do well isn’t worth assessing. Of course, as I’ve said above, that’s likely manifestly rubbish … building up an intelligent and capable human likely requires getting them to do things an LLM could easily do. But the question still stands I think about whether we need to also find a way to focus more on the less mechanical parts of human intelligence and education.

Sure, but IME it is very far from doing the things that good, well written and informed human content could do, especially once we’re talking about forums and the like where you can have good conversations with informed people about your problem.

IMO, what ever LLMs are doing that older systems can’t isn’t greater than what was lost with SEO ads-driven slop and shitty search.

Moreover, the business interest of LLM companies is clearly in dominating and controlling (as that’s just capitalism and the “smart” thing to do), which means the retention of the older human-driven system of information sharing and problem solving is vulnerable to being severely threatened and destroyed … while we could just as well enjoy some hybridised system. But because profit is the focus, and the means of making profit problematic, we’re in rough waters which I don’t think can be trusted to create a net positive (and haven’t been trust worthy for decades now).

I really think it’s mostly about getting a big enough data set to effectively train an LLM.

I mean, yes of course. But I don’t think there’s any way in which it is just about that. Because the business model around having and providing services around LLMs is to supplant the data that’s been trained on and the services that created that data. What other business model could there be?

In the case of google’s AI alongside its search engine, and even chatGPT itself, this is clearly one of the use cases that has emerged and is actually working relatively well: replacing the internet search engine and giving users “answers” directly.

Users like it because it feels more comfortable, natural and useful, and probably quicker too. And in some cases it is actually better. But, it’s important to appreciate how we got here … by the internet becoming shitter, by search engines becoming shitter all in the pursuit of ads revenue and the corresponding tolerance of SEO slop.

IMO, to ignore the “carnivorous” dynamics here, which I think clearly go beyond ordinary capitalism and innovation, is to miss the forest for the trees. Somewhat sadly, this tech era (approx MS windows '95 to now) has taught people that the latest new thing must be a good idea and we should all get on board before it’s too late.

I mean, their goal and service is to get you to the actual web page someone else made.

What made Google so desirable when it started was that it did an excellent job of getting you to the desired web page and off of google as quickly as possible. The prevailing model at the time was to keep users on the page for as long as possible by creating big messy “everything portals”.

Once Google dropped, with a simple search field and high quality results, it took off. Of course now they’re now more like their original competitors than their original successful self … but that’s a lesson for us about what capitalistic success actually ends up being about.

The whole AI business model of completely replacing the internet by eating it up for free is the complete sith lord version of the old portal idea. Whatever you think about copyright, the bottom line is that the deeper phenomenon isn’t just about “stealing” content, it’s about eating it to feed a bigger creature that no one else can defeat.

So … you seen Romulus?

That is beautiful! Thank you, made my day.

Cheers! Very much appreciate the love!

Cheers! Actually not sure exactly why you’re saying this (I’ll take the good vibes though) … but if you’re keen to join in in any way you are most welcome!

Cheers for the shout out! Yea the idea of that community is to be a kind of study group.

Whenever I’ve posted a thought or idea, that’s part question part experiment part pondering, I’ve gotten great replies from others.

Also two people have been running twitch streams of running through the book. Sorrybook is nearly done I think (they’ve been going for half a year now which is quite impressive).

The community is at a point now I suspect where some of us have learnt rust well enough to spread out into projects etc, so it’d be nice to work out how we can do that together at all.

Part of my initial idea with the community was to then have a study group for working through the lemmy codebase, treating it as a helpfully relevant learning opportunity … as we’re all using it, we all probably have features we’d like to add, and the devs and users of it are all right here for feedback.

Additionally, an idea I’ve been mulling over, one which I’d be interested in feedback on … is running further “learning rust” sessions where some of us, including those of us who’ve just “learned” it, actually try to help teach it to new comers.

Having a foundation of material such as “The Book” would make a lot of sense. Where “local teachers” could contribute I think is in posting their own thoughts and perspectives on what is important to take away, what additional ideas, structures or broader connections are worth remembering, and even coming up with little exercises that “learners” could go through and then get feedback on from the “teachers”.

I mean, maybe a hot take, maybe not … casual/social voice conversations at a distance were never a good idea in the first place.

Not absolutely at least. A disconnected voice that can summon your attention at any time wherever you are is a weird, uncomfortable, unpleasant and maybe unhealthy thing.

Textual communication at a distance odd much more natural, as it matches the disconnected communication with a more formal and abstract medium.

I know, but Unicode is big. I’m saying that there may very well be something better.

I appreciate the argument, but I feel like there’s too much of a chance that we can do better with something in unicode. Or, that this isn’t really good enough. Three asterisks is just too meh, IMO, to catch on.

⁂ … to me right now just looks like a splodge on the screen.

Somewhat unfortunately, the pentagram in the older icon probably can’t really be used without some cartoon-ification, because reasons.