FoxQuirk 🦊 @quirk@computerfairi.es

the idea that technology gets to be in a special moral class free of ethical inquiry, that specific forms of technology deserve to exist simply because they can be invented, that technology the word can only refer to items engineered in certain ways by specific classes of people, is deeply problematic. it's a lie. it's a lie that excludes most of the technology produced by human beings over many thousands of years, and obscures our longest lived & most successful cultural technologies

the way our society hijacks the definition of 'technology' to mean only the extra-human.

but humans can't make anything that isn't human. computer as non-human is an illusion. technology - as the practice or product of iterative learning and creation - has to be re-seen as fundamentally organic and often invisible. its not 'technologically advanced' to obliterate other people using factories or things made in them, its just crass. tech must be conducive to life. its what i mean by #socialTech

📷 William Smith -
"Through the lens of a fallen Leaf"

"Wow this is so cool, the scorpion is actually *paying* me to ride across the river on his back!"

https://mastodon.social/@verge/113352494354774252

windows 11 should randomly pop up this message just to annoy people

#programming #names Aargh

Throw the programmers in the sea

Note slapped onto a French sidewalk advertisement:
"We want trees, not this sh*t"
Mon mate, everyone, everywhere agrees.

@quirk I think that's not far off, but probably not quite why it's called a stage

In that both the raised platform of a theatrical stage and the adjustable-height/levels of a microscope stage share the same origin.

Which is that "stage" used to be another way of referring to the storey (floor level) of a building, and I imagine the other meanings derived from that.

With a microscope stage being adjustable in height and thus the oldest ones probably having less fine-grained adjustments that modern ones, they may very well have literally had numbered "stages" (floors/elevation) to refer to the different levels.

hey, so random thought, the flat bit on a microscope where you put your slides it called a "stage", is it called that because the the microscope was invented at a time when people still went to the theatre?

@trochee The fundamental and categorical error made in almost all "AI" hype is that there's anything more than a loose correlation between an initial "prompt" and the following states of the Markov chain.

There's no concept of a "program," no theory of how to "operate" the Markov chain, so at most you're picking where to begin the game of Chutes and Ladders.

The fuck that's engineering of any kind.

I'll see your "'software engineering' is not engineering"

and raise you one

"'prompt engineering' is not _even_ software engineering"

@ireneista @trochee I can't think of any other form of engineering where it's ok to develop something, hope that it works without any specific theory as to ensure that it does, run a few tests, and call it good.

If software engineering was actually a form of engineering, we wouldn't have unit and integration tests, we'd have fucking safety proofs attached to everything that interacts with humans.

@trochee Hot take: software engineering is distinguished from other forms of engineering by the absence of a robust ethical code, licensing program, and well-established theory of harm.

We've had quite a few Tacoma Narrows worth of software-based harm, but thanks to the idea of "tech" as an industry, that hasn't translated into the requirement that programs must work correctly, be safe, and developed with ethics being the first and foremost concern.

ok serious offer

would anyone be interested in the domains magicalgirl.online and magicalgirlonline.com

i have been squatting them for 7 years for use in a future project but at this point i think it's safe to say i will never complete that one, so…

(fw if you want to)