BREAKING: A bunch of U.S. Digital Service employees (including me) were fired tonight. It's still unclear exactly how many. There is no visibility whatsoever into what determined who was let go. Legacy USDS (i.e., pre-DOGE) leadership was not involved in the decision about whom to let go and was not notified in advance that people were going to be fired.
#politics #USPol #DOGE #coup #USDS
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“The Chaos Computer Club supports the three hackers who explained in detail at 37C3 how the Polish rail vehicle manufacturer Newag had manipulated its trains in such a way that they could only be repaired in the company's own workshops. The manufacturer reacted to the publications with an attitude not seen since the 90s and sued the hackers under both criminal and civil law.

The CCC is calling for donations to cover the legal and other resulting costs incurred so far.”

https://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2024/das-ist-vollig-entgleist

@bhcompy @Lazarou @arstechnica buddy, he's mutuals with skynet.

@Lazarou @arstechnica still in the future.

@jplebreton The paper is so disingenuous. Like the Gemini one, it very strongly suggests that it’s playable, but when you dig in to it it’s actually not in any meaningful sense. It’s as much a game as E3 fake game footage. So quite apart from not solving any useful gamedev problems, it’s not a game engine, it’s not even a game.

"Diffusion Models Are Real-Time Game Engines" is "Cybertruck can function briefly as a boat" except aimed more directly at *people who should f@#!ing know better*.

@twoyaks I officially deem this a good use of AI

Cool website: enter your name and the Landsat people will spell it out in satellite images! https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/apps/YourNameInLandsat-main/index.html

Anytime I get a chance, I tell people they should be using a password manager. I don’t want to rattle on about a bunch of technical details that most people don’t care about. 
If you are interested in an excellent and concise explanation of why your old approach for passwords does not work and how password managers improve your […]

https://dariusdunlap.com/2024/09/get-a-password-manager/

when you're hanging out at your friend's parents' house and find an unlabeled vhs tape in the back of a shelf, and despite knowing better you just can't help but pop it in out of morbid curiosity, there's no way to describe the relief when it's just a frank zappa bootleg

there's a whole other story about NaNoWriMo's grooming scandal last year, where a paid mod was recruiting from the Christian teen forum to his adult diaper fetish site

their solution was to shut the forums, which also saved complaints about their past bad sponsors like the fake publisher in 2022

@AcausalRobotGod saw a great talk earlier from someone using mutmut to systematically take apart plausible-seeming LLM generated test suites - if the meaning of the code is inverted but the tests still pass, then they're meaningless...

https://hackernoon.com/mutmut-a-python-mutation-testing-system-9b9639356c78

I just dreamed up an amusing way for things to fail using LLMs:
1. Deliverable is a test suite testing some new feature. Validate by looking at the logs to see if things passed.
2. LLM makes generates tests and generates passing logs.
3. Everybody signs off on it. Job well done.
4. Nothing works, of course, because the logs were generated by the LLM instead of by the test suite.

It would be hard to make this mistake, but it's amusing to think about...

Writing a novel is (usually) not working ceaselessly to bring me into existence, therefore it's classist and ableist. Only exception is Harry Potter fan fic.

NaNoWriMo gets AI sponsor, says not writing your novel with AI is ‘classist and ableist’

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2024/09/02/nanowrimo-gets-ai-sponsor-says-not-writing-your-novel-with-ai-is-classist-and-ableist/

X: “We need systemic changes to tackle the climate crisis, guilting people into turning off their air con is pointless, we need to address corporate behaviour”

Me: “Totally.”

X: “That’s why it’s okay for me to drive an SUV, fly for weekly for work, gamble on bitcoin, and replace carbon-effective tools with LLMs everywhere I can”

Me: “No… wait, what?”

X: “In fact, implying I have any personal responsibility to do the right thing is ablist, classist, and deeply unethical. You are a bad person”

"We find that, due to technological trajectories set in motion by past policy, a global irreversible solar tipping point may have passed where solar energy gradually comes to dominate global electricity markets, without any further climate policies. Uncertainties arise, however, over grid stability in a renewables-dominated power system, the availability of sufficient finance in underdeveloped economies, the capacity of supply chains and political resistance from regions that lose employment. Policies resolving these barriers may be more effective than price instruments to accelerate the transition to clean energy."

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41971-7

@JetlagJen @ChrisMayLA6
Doctors should decline to take the secretary of state for health as a private patient.
They set the level of NHS provision.

It's classist and ableist to oppose using AI to write novels! https://pivot-to-ai.com/2024/09/02/nanowrimo-gets-ai-sponsor-says-not-writing-your-novel-with-ai-is-classist-and-ableist/