Days since last open source issue tracker pollution by annoying nerds: zero

My investigation tracked to you [Outlier.ai] as the source of problems - where your instructional videos are tricking people into creating those issues to - apparently train your AI.

I couldn't locate these particular instructional videos, but from what I can gather outlier.ai farms out various "tasks" to internet gig workers as part of some sort of AI training scheme.

Bonus terribleness: one of the tasks a few months back was apparently to wear a head mounted camera "device" to record ones every waking moment.

Nights into Dreams. I'd have dreams about that game as a kid.

Yeah production of consumer writeable CDs / DVDs / BDs has basically stopped already. The end is in sight.

Also I'm not sure how much of a problem this is for newer CD drives, but older ones tend to give out sooner or later.

My Sega Saturn*'s drive still works, but I also installed a Satiator** drive emulator in case that changes.

* ^{My username is serious business after all}

** ^{Had to go with this option since it's the only non-destructive one}

leaked

I mean is it really leaking if you can get access to the dataset without signing anything agreeing to not leak it? When I last checked you could just like look at the questions after checking a box acknowledging that they can see your email address but that's it.

I'm the weirdo who installs blu-ray drives in all my computers. I'm also the weirdo who has multiple computers. There are currently three or four (I've lost count) blu-ray drives in my house.

It's great being able to buy and own movies without dealing with the horrors of streaming. Unfortunately discs are becoming less and less popular commercially, so a lot of stuff nowadays is streaming only.

Also my car can play MP3 CDs so of course I need to be able to create those from a computer ^{disregard the fact that my car also supports USB which I neglect since it's less retro.}

Oh yeah I meant "easy" in the sense of "maybe it can get it right from sheer chance by pattern matching training data from the interwebs"

I hope everyone is ready for the constant overlap between politics and AI / Silicon Valley; because I'm not.

Trump Admin Accused of Using AI to Draft Executive Orders (Source Bluesky Thread).

I'm not 100% sure I buy that the EOs were written by AI rather than people who simply don't care about or don't know the details; but it certainly looks possible. Especially that example about the Gulf of Mexico. Either way I am heartened that this is the conclusion people jump to.

Aside: I also like how much media is starting to cite bluesky (and activitypub to a lesser extent). I assume a bunch of journalists moved off of twitter or went multi-platform.

You think people would secretly submit easy questions just for the reward money, and that since the question database is so big and inscrutable no one bothered to verify one way or another? No, that could never happen.

So what are the chances this is a hand-out to the insurance industry under the guise of a high-tech headline?

In completely related news I'm strongly considering getting my affairs in order and moving anywhere in the entire world besides the united states somewhere in Europe; as it's apparently no longer safe for trans people or C++ developers* in the US. So if anyone has any advice (or job leads) please do share.

* This is a memory safety joke

Understatement of the year:

I mean, these [concerns about teenagers having access to guns] are questions that are beyond the scope of Metro Schools but need to be addressed by the broader community

That broader community? Why that's called the federal government.

Buckle up humans; because humanity's last exam just dropped: https://lastexam.ai/ (Hacker News discussion). May the odds be ever in your favor.

Edit: Per NyTimes, whom I hate, they were apparently trying to avoid an over-dramatic name. Amazing:

The test’s original name, “Humanity’s Last Stand,” was discarded for being overly dramatic.

The video mentions this as well as other practical limitations (like OOMing the youtube phone app lol).

Really there are fairly straightforward technical ways around these techniques -- out of bounds or invisible subtitles can be cropped, or individual letters can be formed into paragraphs the same way PDF readers do; but it's still funny that it works at all and involves the word ass.

It comes on the coattails of a long history of AI companies not caring at all about security, privacy, data integrity, or being nice people.

Here's a bonus high fiber diet pro-tip: Metamucil tastes like old socks and individual capsules have hardly any fiber anyway, I eat triscuits and Oroweat Double-Fiber bread instead because they're both much much better tasting. Also chili is the food of the gods.

Yeah my favorite historian on ActivityPub made a similar point:

Don’t waste time arguing with the people telling us that’s not what happened. They’re not mistaken, they are engaged in propaganda. [...] “He’s just exuberantly greeting the people!” Yes. He is exuberantly greeting the people by doing the Nazi salute.

Moving off facebook was easy for me I simply neglected to log into it for a couple of decades.

I'm pretty sure it's impossible for a TV show called Cadillacs and Dinosaurs to suck even if they tried.

(oh no it's politics)

Trump's new cryptocurrency scheme is surprisingly forthright about being a pump & dump:

CIC Digital LLC, an affiliate of The Trump Organization, and Fight Fight Fight LLC collectively own 80% of the Trump Cards, subject to a 3-year unlocking schedule. CIC Digital LLC and Celebration Cards LLC, the owners of Fight Fight Fight LLC, will receive trading revenue derived from trading activities of Trump Meme Cards.

Essentially according to their own website, they started by selling 20%* of the tokens to the public, and over the next few years will... sell another 80% of the tokens to the public. To the moon!

* half of that they describe as "liquidity" instead of public distribution -- whatever that means.

I read about this gross Robo Anne Frank LLM by a company called "School AI": Bluesky post (looks like via an activitypub bridge, but I can't be bothered to find the canonical link), News Article, School AI's website.

Gee it sure is weird how all these digital clones the AI companies keep coming up with all have the exact same (lack of a) personality.

‘Many of the groups that we are concerned about disappearing – gay couple couples, lesbian couples – from a traditional organs-bumping-together standpoint, can’t have kids… that are genetically both of theirs,’ says Simone.

No no they're super smart and unless we come up with some sort of way for gay people to have children they'll disappear entirely (gay people of course first came to earth from space in the year 1952, but the starship's egg chambers were damaged in the crash landing)