Tags · technology  

• 18-Jul-2024
  Today in Academic work: AI is Bullshit From the Abstract: Recently, there has been considerable interest in large language models: machine learning systems which produce human-like text and dialogue. Applications of these systems have been plagued by persistent inaccuracies in their output; these are often called “AI hallucinations”. We argue that these falsehoods, and the overall activity of large language models, is...
• 15-Nov-2023
  Torment Nexus, oi This speech by Charlie Stross matches the painful assessments I’ve slowly come to in my decades reading SF and watching the tech boom. I didn’t *want* to go to a cyberpunk dystopia so much as thought it was inevitable we would end up there. But no destination is inevitable. Human beings can steer. We can...
• 21-Apr-2023
  Quote of the Day I say often that computers are terrible. Nontechnical people seldom take me seriously. But people in tech, like Galloway do: A growing vein of the tech community (Venture Catastrophists) deploy weapons of mass distraction and fear to wallpaper over an inconvenient truth: The menace unleashed on America the past two decades isn’t psychotic homeless people...
• 02-Mar-2014
  Freedom and the rule of law: fragile and precious From Our Comrade The Electron by Maciej Ceglowski: Bad people are using the global surveillance system we built to do something mean! Holy crap! Who could have imagined this? Or when we learn that the American government is reading the email that you send unencrypted to the ad-supported mail service in another country where it...
• 24-Nov-2008
  Los Angeles Tech Networking For the past year I’ve ramped up my own tech networking. Someone asked on the excellent and long-running Web405 list for places to network a la VIC (Venice Interactive Community) of the old days (late 1990s) and these were the answers: BarCampLA: http://barcampla.org/ Dealmaker LA: http://www.dealmakermedia.com/la.html Digital Family Reunion: http://www.digitalfamilyreunion.net/ Dorkbot: http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotsocal/ ExecTech: http://www.meetup.com/ExecTec/ Geek...
• 13-Mar-2008

  
  How to Dial a Telephone (1927) It occurs to me that if rotary telephones were put in back service they’d have to repeat this public service message. You can put your SIM card in a rotary phone, you know. Portable Rotary Phone – Black. And here’s an art piece that represents a USB rotary dialer. If i used VOIP I would...
• 29-Jul-2004
  Oh Snap! Cory Doctorow went OFF on Gizmodo! …on BoingBoing: Ebook column that gets it all wrong
• 06-Jan-2004
  Race to the bottom I was in Wal-Mart yesterday. The whole joint is a race to the bottom. How cheap can it be done. We don’t care where. We don’t care who. We don’t consider long term economic benefit or harm. We want the lowest price. So Sassy’s predictions, inasmuch as they focus on cheapness – eliminating staff, outsourcing...
• 10-Apr-2002
  Gateway launches campaign for rights in digital music. Gateway launches campaign for rights in digital music. This is a good move. I hope other technology companies will take stands like this. Check this Starting Saturday, all 277 Gateway(R) stores will give away CD-R blanks (limit three per customer, while supplies last). This Saturday and Sunday at 4 p.m. local time, all Gateway stores...