FoxQuirk 🦊 @quirk@computerfairi.es

Last night, one of my students thought he had read a specific poem by a poet we're about to read, but I didn't recognize his description of the content of the poem. So he opens up Google and types in the poet's name and the topic, and it just spat out a fabricated poem in her style. This is what's really unnerving--"AI" is not adding value to a search service that works; it's flooding the search results with so much crap that you can't even verify a date or the existence of a text anymore.

OpenAI in front of the Supreme Court: sorry,,, we needz to use all copyrighted material on earth, otherwise our systems simply don't work uwu

OpenAI when another AI company (allegedly) does the same: THEY STOLE OUR WORK? OUR HARD WORK?? STOLEN! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?

As someone who is totally blind, the Fediverse is the only place where I have ever been able to follow people such as photographers, artists, or even those who post pictures of their cats or the food they ate. The reason is that most of them use alt text. They take the time to describe the images that my screen reader can't recognise. Some write the descriptions themselves, and others use tools such as altbot. Some worry that their descriptions aren't good enough, especially when they are new at this. Let me assure you, not only are they good enough, they are extremely appreciated! If the rest of the world thought as you did, it would be a much better place. Don't hesitate to ask if you're unsure of something, but never think that we don't notice your effort.

#appreciation #accessibility #altbot #alttext #blind #blindness #fediverse #gratitude #images #inclusivity #peoplewhocare #pictures #technology

Semiotic Standard: the icons from Alien

Following on from our Solar System transit map, we settled on this as our next vector art project: recreating the "Semiotic Standard" icons used to decorate the Nostromo spaceship sets in the 1979 film Alien.

We also thought it'd be fun to make them usable as fediverse emoji, so we did that.

Find the full set in emojo form here: https://lexie.space/post/blogstuff/2019/12/16/semiotic-standard.html

See the attached image, or https://noisy.lexie.space/@alexis/103322172832060183, for examples.

We'll be publishing large SVG files of these, too - as soon as we get the source file sorted out so we can export them easily. (we still suck at illustrator lol) In the meantime, we hope you enjoy these, and watch this space for more!

TIL big specialized forums have started backdating millions of LLM-generated posts. Now you cannot be sure a reply from 2009 on some forum for physics or maps or flower or drill enthusiasts haven't been machine-generated and totally wrong.

https://hallofdreams.org/posts/physicsforums/

Did you know you can just trans your gender as much and as many times as you like?

TAYLOR REAL!!!

suit is by rabidskunkz

leather

I have said before that my primary life philosophy is an "Ethics of Agency", and I have talked about this before on a podcast episode https://fossandcrafts.org/episodes/11-an-ethics-of-agency.html

I'm not interested in "happiness" as much, because I don't want a rat that leans on a lever. The "ethics of agency" thinking is a rough approach modification of utilitarianism that replaces the measurements of "happiness" and "suffering" in Utilitarianism with "agency" and "subjection".

But "subjection" is weighed more heavily.

I am not "against AI". I actually am very interested in building AI systems, but not the kinds which exist or are being pushed today.

To me, the important part of an AI system is its accountability.

We actually do hold much of our software accountable: if it does something bad, we actively change and repair it.

Corporations are rushing to flood the market with tools which don't care, have no accountability, don't have a stake in things.

That's depressing.

Every time I see someone bring up "IQ scores" I feel the need to repeat: IQ scores were literally invented by eugenicists and they've always been biased towards privilege

Also if you haven't noticed, once someone starts to believe they're a genius, they start to think a lot less clearly.

Outlook certificate errors be like:

❌ The certificate is not signed by an authority you trust, and in fact is signed by the Alien Alliance for Human Destruction.
❌ The certificate uses an algorithm deprecated in 1876 due to being solvable on paper by bright kindergarteners.
❌ The expiration date is notated in a calendar unknown to our science.
✅ The certificate has a valid name

You know you're a music fan when you can solve this without spinning the wheel.

The lazy cat gets the nibble.

The example I'm using here is CD+G - a format designed to let you display simple graphics alongside the audio on an audio CD.

The problem with CD+G is that it's "extra" data on top of normal audio CD. Play a CD+G disc in a normal CD player, and it's a regular audio CD.

For example, here's a CD+G disc with cute art and karaoke lyrics if you put it in a CD+G player.

New blog post! I've written a little bit about CD archiving, but wanted to get into a bit of a more practical example - what you might easily miss when backing up a CD, and data you could accidentally end up throwing away.

https://www.mistys-internet.website/blog/blog/2025/01/23/what-you-might-miss-when-backing-up-cds/

you: settling for the lesser of two weasels

me:

draw-over commission: @PsyChuan and @renabot as Rally and May from Gunsmith Cats (1995)!

#tsunderdogComm