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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2024

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  • It is a blogging site, but it’s also notable for being in favor of free-speech absolutism, to the point of allowing Nazis on the platform. From Wikipedia:

    In January 2022, the Center for Countering Digital Hate accused Substack of allowing content that could be dangerous to public health. The Center estimated that the company earned $2.5 million per year from the top five anti-vaccine authors alone. The three founders responded via blog post affirming their commitment to minimal censorship.

    Substack faced further criticism in November 2023 for allowing its platform to be used by white nationalists, Nazis, and antisemites. In an open letter, more than 100 Substack creators threatened to leave the platform and implored Substack’s leadership to stop giving bigotry a platform. In response, Substack CEO Hamish McKenzie said the company would continue to allow the publication of extremist views because attempting to censor them would make the problem worse. Creators like Casey Newton, Molly White, and Ryan Broderick left the platform as a result.








  • The fundamental issue is and has always been that automation is being used to replace people, when it should be used to free up their time. Productivity increases could’ve meant shorter work weeks. But that didn’t generate as much money for the shareholders, so it didn’t get pursued. And now we’ve got LLMs and generative AI, which could’ve been a (admittedly rather shitty and niche) tool, but for the same reasons as before, companies would rather throw people under the bus instead.

    Artists aren’t telling you that people washing dishes don’t matter. They’re telling you they might be getting fired just like those dishwashers were. If you care about either, I suggest standing up for the artists here. And once that’s done, they can stand up for everyone else right back. I think you’ll find they’d be happy to return the favor.



  • I was suggesting that no one else needs it explained to them either.

    You’d hope so! But alas, some idiots exist. And when a title like this appears, it becomes difficult to tell if such an idiot wrote it at first glance, and more to point, a title like that tends to create more idiots (and it’s also just kinda offensive). That’s why it’s important not to write headlines like this.

    Sidenote: If you want people to not take things personally, avoid personal pronouns. “Is that something that you need explained?” → “Is that something that people need explained?” It makes a world of difference and I’m confident I’ve avoided several arguments that could’ve spawned from my own posts thanks to making that kind of change. Not foolproof, sure – we are on the internet – but it helps.




  • You can read that from the article text, but a) the text doesn’t appear to actually suggest autistic people do have empathy, which is a problem since b) the title absolutely implies they don’t.

    At best, this is a terrible headline. But if I’m being honest, I don’t have much respect for an article that seems to be all too eager to tout the erstwhile benefits of an LLM, let alone one that is in all likelihood teaching people how to act more like an LLM. So I’m not inclined to take a charitable interpretation.


  • The changelog lists 30 significant changes, of which the top new feature is integrating Whisper. This means whisper.cpp, which is Georgi Gerganov’s entirely local and offline version of OpenAI’s Whisper automatic speech recognition model. The bottom line is that FFmpeg can now automatically subtitle videos for you.

    Yeah hey, can anyone chime in if this is at all based off LLMs? Because my problems with the incorrect plagiarism machine don’t end just because it’s now the offline incorrect plagiarism machine. Making OpenAI’s garbage hockey open source doesn’t make it okay. Or should I just start calling this shit FOSSwashing?

    I dug around for a bit and couldn’t find much of anything, but judging by a look at the Github pages for both versions of Whisper, it’s looking very related. If that’s the case, fuck right off. I don’t want AI in FFmpeg, either.


  • Because companies that chase LLMs tend not to give me a choice, that’s why. They inject it into everything they touch because they think it’s the Future™, and therefore I must obviously want it around every second of my life, every day, consequences be damned. The earth can burn, my privacy can erode, misinformation can run rampant, and the copyright of small artists can die, all for the sake of an overused, scarcely-functional “tool” that a bunch of MBAs think I can’t so much as breathe without.

    Almost nobody actually wanted Proton to make this. They just went and did it to chase a trend, ignoring the many people who hate it all the while. The last thing I need is for the the company that my email depends on to start getting dragged around by tech bros. If they’re willing to make a decision as rash and irresponsible as that, it is a clear indicator that worse is to come.