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

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  • Probably worth mentioning that another alternative called TopAnswers.xyz exists as well—both Codidact and TopAnswers mention each other in their homepages, which I find pretty neat.

    Definitely interested to see how both of these sites pan out. StackExchange has been a powerful force for good over the years, and it’s been sad to hear it starting to slide down recently, not that I should be too surprised since they got bought four years back. I’m eager to see what a properly open-source and nonprofit community can do on the good template that SE once set.

    I do wish either of these sites could host in a different country than the UK though; I’ve heard more than enough by now to feel that hosting a tech project in the UK is scarcely any better than doing so in the US, privacy-wise. (Though for that matter, TA uses Amazon for hosting, which is probably the worst of both worlds.)




  • this is the era of AI

    Uh, sure, so long as you define an “era” as “a period wherein a bunch of C-suites wet themselves over unproven tech.” I hope you realize that something having a lot of money behind it for a few years isn’t indicative that it’s about to revolutionize the world. There are plenty of near-useless things that had lots of excitement behind them, and still didn’t go anywhere.

    I’ve seen what GenAI and LLMs can do. It’s a magic trick; it looks impressive, but for almost every possible use case just isn’t helpful, and unfortunately for all of us, the magicians (i.e. OpenAI et al) are douchebags on top. This is not tech worth advocating for.



  • Well, considering I never voted for Trump, am against bigotry in all its forms, don’t want to deport people for having the wrong skin color, believe that free healthcare is a human right, hate capitalism, etc… I don’t think it’s unfair to say that I very much am not like the fascists currently in power or the people who voted for them at all.

    How is it fair to criticize me as though I’m the same as them when I’m fighting against them? Does my being born here somehow make me deserving of scorn?



  • Yeah. I hear you there. Problem I usually have is that the odds of an accusation tend to scale less with posting style in my experience and more with level of disagreement, or whether or not the poster has personally witnessed something. Basically, “I didn’t see this with my own two eyes/dislike you, so this is obviously bot behavior.” It’s a conspiracy theorist-like attitude, and it’s predated LLMs entirely.

    Nonetheless, I’m not happy that an entire new form of bot scrutiny has been introduced, and I absolutely cannot wait for GenAI/LLM hype to die the fuck down.











  • I understand why you’re frustrated, but you’ve got to realize that the presence of resources that can break you out of bad thinking doesn’t mean it’s easy to break out of bad thinking, nor does it absolve those who duped you into the bad thinking in the first place. Cults work for a reason.

    Just as an example, consider how hard it is to:

    • Find time to learn when you’re struggling to work enough to afford rent
    • Find a way to learn that works for you if you’re disabled
    • Consider your thinking to be in need of challenge when everyone you listen to tells you otherwise, and you trust them
    • Listen to opposing viewpoints when you have thorough hatred for the people telling you them

    This is just a smattering of ways a path out of broken thinking can be more fraught than it looks. There are plenty more, so even in cases where these specific ones don’t apply, that doesn’t mean the person in question is intentionally ignorant or malicious.

    If you’re angry, be angry. I don’t judge that whatsoever. I only ask that you be angry at the people deliberately trying to make everything worse, rather than the those who they’re tricking. Get mad at the influencers, not the audience.