ajsadauskas

It's time to call a spade a spade. ChatGPT isn't just hallucinating. It's a bullshit machine.

From TFA (thanks @mxtiffanyleigh for sharing):

"Bullshit is 'any utterance produced where a speaker has indifference towards the truth of the utterance'. That explanation, in turn, is divided into two "species": hard bullshit, which occurs when there is an agenda to mislead, or soft bullshit, which is uttered without agenda.

"ChatGPT is at minimum a soft bullshitter or a bullshit machine, because if it is not an agent then it can neither hold any attitudes towards truth nor towards deceiving hearers about its (or, perhaps more properly, its users') agenda."

https://futurism.com/the-byte/researchers-ai-chatgpt-hallucinations-terminology

@technology #technology #chatGPT #LLM #LargeLanguageModels

I'm thinking seriously about getting Google out of my life, and trying NextCloud.

Looking to get a personal account through a managed provider.

Does anyone have any experience with it?

How does it compare to ownCloud?

Any hosts I should look at or avoid?

Any apps I should get for it, or avoid?

Any issues I should be aware of before I switch?

@asklemmy #NextCloud #OpenSource #Linux #Cloud

What should I add to my '90s website?

So I'm currently toying around with NeoCities, and decided to trial it by building your classic mid '90s Geocities/Tripod/Angelfire pastiche website.

Some of the most important elements are already in place.

Tile background? Large font? Heading in bright pink with a shadow? Unusual colour choices? Random cat gifs? Under construction gif? Check! Check! Check!

In the true spirit of the '90s DIY web, some more pages (including the links page) are coming soon.

(I'm thinking of adding a page dedicated to either Britney or a nu-metal band.)

You can see the page so far here: https://that90ssite.neocities.org/

There are a few things that I want to add to make it complete, and I'm looking for suggestions.

The first, is to embed a midi file that plays automatically. Any suggestions on the best way of doing this?

Second, it's just not going to be complete without a guestbook.

Third, any webring suggestions?

Fourth, what's the best way of adding a java chat room in 2024?

Finally, anything else that really needs to be a part of a great '90s website?

UPDATE: Thanks for all the feedback! I've added more annoying GIFs, a guestbook, a links page, and a cyber cat hangout.

UPDATE 2: And added even more gifs, an amazing Amiga demo, and a ton of links.

@asklemmy #tech #webdev #neocities #technology

Are there currently any Substack replacements that integrate with ActivityPub?

So I'm currently looking for a Substack substitute for taking donations.

I'd want it to feature a blog (and preferably newsletters too) that include a mix of publicly-accessible posts, as well as posts that are only visible to donors.

And ideally, I want it to also integrate with ActivityPub too.

That might mean a Fediverse post is automatically generated when a new blog post is published. Or potentially the publicly visible blog posts are published in full to the Fediverse.

Now, I know there are a few donations platforms that can handle the first part, such as Ghost and Ko-Fi.

There are also blogging platforms such as WriteFreely/Write.as and Micro.blog that integrate with the Fedi.

And in theory you could do both with a WordPress blog and number of plugins, some paid. But especially with paid plugins, that's likely to get quite expensive quickly. (Not to mention some of the questionable things that have happened at Automattic in recent weeks.)

But are there any platforms out there that support both?

Or is the best option at this stage just to get a Ko-Fi/Ghost account for the donations and donor-only posts, with a separate micro.blog or write.as account for the publicly accessible posts?

@asklemmy #fediverse #substack #blogs

In an age of LLMs, is it time to reconsider human-edited web directories?

Back in the early-to-mid '90s, one of the main ways of finding anything on the web was to browse through a web directory.

These directories generally had a list of categories on their front page. News/Sport/Entertainment/Arts/Technology/Fashion/etc.

Each of those categories had subcategories, and sub-subcategories that you clicked through until you got to a list of websites. These lists were maintained by actual humans.

Typically, these directories also had a limited web search that would crawl through the pages of websites listed in the directory.

Lycos, Excite, and of course Yahoo all offered web directories of this sort.

(EDIT: I initially also mentioned AltaVista. It did offer a web directory by the late '90s, but this was something it tacked on much later.)

By the late '90s, the standard narrative goes, the web got too big to index websites manually.

Google promised the world its algorithms would weed out the spam automatically.

And for a time, it worked.

But then SEO and SEM became a multi-billion-dollar industry. The spambots proliferated. Google itself began promoting its own content and advertisers above search results.

And now with LLMs, the industrial-scale spamming of the web is likely to grow exponentially.

My question is, if a lot of the web is turning to crap, do we even want to search the entire web anymore?

Do we really want to search every single website on the web?

Or just those that aren't filled with LLM-generated SEO spam?

Or just those that don't feature 200 tracking scripts, and passive-aggressive privacy warnings, and paywalls, and popovers, and newsletters, and increasingly obnoxious banner ads, and dark patterns to prevent you cancelling your "free trial" subscription?

At some point, does it become more desirable to go back to search engines that only crawl pages on human-curated lists of trustworthy, quality websites?

And is it time to begin considering what a modern version of those early web directories might look like?

@degoogle #tech #google #web #internet #LLM #LLMs #enshittification #technology #search #SearchEngines #SEO #SEM

In five years time, some CTO will review the mysterious outage or technical debt in their organisation.

They will unearth a mess of poorly written, poorly -documented, barely-functioning code their staff don't understand.

They will conclude that they did not actually save money by replacing human developers with LLMs.

#AI #LLM #LargeLanguageModels #WebDev #Coding #Tech #Technology @technology

My real worry with Google's voyage into enshittification (thanks to Cory Doctorow @pluralistic the term) is YouTube.

Through YT, for the past 15 years, the world has basically entrusted Google to be the custodian of pretty much our entire global video archive.

There's countless hours of archived footage — news reports, political speeches, historical events, documentaries, indie films, academic lectures, conference presentations, rare recordings, concert footage, obscure music — where the best or only copy is now held by Google through YouTube.

So what happens if maintaining that archival footage becomes unprofitable?

#tech #technology #Google #enshittification #youtube #video @technology #capitalism #film #television #cinema #art #arts #SocialMedia #business #economics

Are agile scrums an outdated idea?

Here's a video on YouTube making the case for why agile was an innovative methodology when it was first introduced 20 years ago.

However, he argues these days, daily scrums are a waste of time, and many organisations would be better off automating their reporting processes, giving teams more autonomy, and letting people get on with their work:

https://youtu.be/KJ5u_Kui1sU?si=M_VLET7v0wCP4gHq

A few of my thoughts.

First, it's worth noting that many organisations that claim to be "agile" aren't, and many that claim to use agile processes don't.

Just as a refresher, here's the key values and principles from the agile manifesto: http://agilemanifesto.org/

1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
2. Working software over comprehensive documentation
3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
4. Responding to change over following a plan

* Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
* Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.
* Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
* Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
* Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
* The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
* Working software is the primary measure of progress.
* Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
* Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
* Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.
* The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
* At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

Your workplace isn't agile if your team is micromanaged from above; if you have a kanban board filled with planning, documentation, and reporting tasks; if your organisation is driven by processes and procedures; if you don't have autonomous cross-functional teams.

Yet in many "agile" organisations, I've noticed that the basic principles of agile are ignored, and what you have is micromanagement through scrums and kanban boards.

And especially outside software development teams, agile tends to just be a hollow buzzword. (I once met a manager at a conference who talked up how agile his business was, and didn't believe me when I said agile was originally a software development methodology — one he revealed he wasn't following the principles of.)

#agile @technology #technology #scrum #tech #Dev

"Free speech absolutist" allegedly fires employee for raising security concerns.

Apparently Elon's version of free speech doesn't extend to employees who raise concerns about information security:

"Alan Rosa, who was Twitter’s global head of information security, filed the lawsuit late on Tuesday in New Jersey federal court, alleging breach of contract, wrongful termination and retaliation, among other claims. X Corp did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"Rosa claims that late last year, after Musk acquired the company, he was told to cut his department’s budget for physical security by 50%...

"Rosa says he objected because the cuts would put Twitter at risk of violating a $150m settlement it entered into earlier in 2022 with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which claimed Twitter had misused users’ personal information. The agreement required Twitter to implement privacy and information security controls to protect confidential data.

"He was fired days after raising those concerns, according to the lawsuit. Rosa is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, and legal fees."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/06/elon-musk-fires-twitter-executive-security-concerns

@technology #X #Twitter #ElonMusk #Elon #Musk

Looks like there might be yet another mass-migration wave from Twitter to Mastodon on the way...

https://www.thefader.com/2023/09/18/elon-musk-pay-for-twitter

#twitter #tech #technology @technology #X #fediverse

I wonder how Google's plans to develop a messaging and communications platform it consistently supports are coming along...

Oh wait...

https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/18/23878449/google-nest-hub-max-end-support-meet-zoom

#technology @technology #tech #google

Prominent "free-speech absolutist" threatens to sue Jewish anti-hate group because it engaged in free speech he didn't like.

"Elon Musk has threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League after accusing the civil rights group that campaigns against antisemitism and bigotry of trying to “kill” his X social media platform.

"The owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, said the ADL was trying to shut down his company by 'falsely accusing it and me of being antisemitic'."

If your list of enemies includes the ADL, then there's a more-than-reasonable chance that you're an anti-semite.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/05/elon-musk-sue-adl-x-twitter

@technology #twitter #musk #ElonMusk