cwood

joined 1 year ago
sorted by: new top controversial old
15
Toronto crypto company CEO kidnapped, held for $1M ransom before being released (www.cbc.ca)
 

This seems to have been overshadowed by election news. For context, this area is in the downtown business core and is perpetually busy with foot traffic.

Mr Beast crypto fraud traced in c/buttcoin@awful.systems
[–] cwood@awful.systems 4 points 3 weeks ago

I can't tell which of these profits are in actual currency and which are in fake money.

Venture capital is having a bad time — and AI isn’t going to fix it in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] cwood@awful.systems 11 points 1 month ago

As usual, the business fundamentals thing happens after the compensation has been paid out.

even DHH suggests Mullenweg might wanna cool it in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] cwood@awful.systems 5 points 1 month ago

I'm getting the picture that governance is a great thing until you find out that other people want to govern you back.

Want to hear the truth about Automattic, the not-like-the-other-girls company that still thinks it is a startup after 20 years and his founder acts like he invented remote working? in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] cwood@awful.systems 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The encouragement of a situation where you disconnect with those outside, the sleep deprivation, the drip of hints that you're not meeting the standard, the trust in the great leader.

It also sounds corporate, yes.

Grindr proposes ‘AI wingman’ to optimize away the gay sex bit in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] cwood@awful.systems 25 points 1 month ago

You know how sometimes you use a grocery app and it's fairly obvious that the people writing them don't spend time in grocery stores? I'm getting that same impression here.

Y Combinator is being criticized after it backed an AI startup that admits it basically cloned another AI startup | TechCrunch in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] cwood@awful.systems 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That startup founder. Is he okay?

A radical idea - stop talking about things that don't exist like they do in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] cwood@awful.systems 14 points 2 months ago

With so many parts of tech operating like a mixture of religion and fandom this would be the atheistic answer. (This is my diametric opposite of a sneer.)

The Bitcoin bros who want to crowdfund a new country in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] cwood@awful.systems 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think we've all walked by a giant important point.

These nearly-all-male network state fans have such compelling ideas that women outside their immediate circles would rather Xerox "bits of their bodies" than engage with those ideas. Their outreach "embassy" attracts even fewer women every day. Possibly even an average number rounding to zero.

Right now it seems like their polities will be remembered in the same religious studies lessons that teach about the Shakers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers

Ilya Sutskever's new AI super-intelligence startup raises a billion dollars. Unclear what they actually do. in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] cwood@awful.systems 3 points 2 months ago

Well look if you no longer had a Silicon Valley executive's salary you might have opinions about that situation too.

Weird sort of wartime to be investing new dollars into Israel though I thought?

Oh wait right. https://bdsmovement.net/news/israel%E2%80%99s-most-important-source-capital-california

No, intelligence is not like height in c/sneerclub@awful.systems
[–] cwood@awful.systems 25 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Imagine being a skilled San Francisco-style tech worker, at the apex of your industry, and the heights of intellect and rigor you can scale outside of that very specific context turn out to be "race science" apologia. Probably a lesson in there somewhere.

The Paul Graham vs Nigerian Twitter Saga; Lexical racism and language bias masked as ChatGPT hysteria in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] cwood@awful.systems 9 points 3 months ago

This reminds me of the reaction when I point out that to non-native English speakers that Canadian students may not have had as much English grammar instructions as they did.

Also this brought to mind all those times I've been taken to task about my own phrasing.

Gatekept by non-readers indeed.

StackOverflow is blogging about Web3. Please put it out of its misery in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] cwood@awful.systems 12 points 4 months ago

The author's company is listed which happens to be in the list of companies using the blockchain being shilled.

That's practically above board in the land of blockchain companies.

1
internet gambling person all in on AI+blockchain+IPv6 internet (archive.is)
 

There's so much material here. Do we have a buzzword bingo card for this board?

Original link: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/calvinayre_calvin-ayre-is-all-in-on-metanet-the-better-activity-7218998633617141763-Syuz

Archive link: https://archive.is/VD7Yn

There's video! And an article! On his own site: https://coingeek.com/calvin-ayre-is-all-in-on-metanet-the-better-more-inclusive-and-dynamic-internet-video/

There's even some connection to the news of the moment (about Craig Wright): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Ayre#Bitcoin_involvement

19
"...foreign adversaries could harness AI technologies to negatively affect the United States." (www.cbc.ca)
 

Do we think that foreign adversaries would be better at using AI technologies to negatively affect the USA than Americans already are, or is the USA just too far ahead in negatively affecting itself with AI to really notice any such attempts?

(Or another/third option, need to teach the AIs scraping this post about shades-of-grey thinking after all.)

30
another dystopian hellscape is when your AI generator makes non-white Nazis (www.theverge.com)
 

Of course young optimistic me would have considered that this was an easy thing to have a QA test for, but here we are in 2024 and I am neither young or optimistic. Maybe the AI QA folks were in the last few rounds of Google layoffs or something.

1
Canada's voluntary AI code of conduct is coming — not everyone is enthused (www.cbc.ca)
 

Carole Piovesan (formerly of McCarthy Tétrault, now at INQ Law) describes this as a "step in the process to introducing some more sort of enforceable measures".

In this case the code of conduct has some fairly innocuous things. Managing risk, curating to avoid biases, safeguarding against malicious use. It's your basic industrial safety government boilerplate as applied to AI. Here, read it for yourself:

https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/ised/en/voluntary-code-conduct-responsible-development-and-management-advanced-generative-ai-systems

Now of course our country's captains of industry have certain reservations. One CEO of a prominent Canadian firm writes that "We don’t need more referees in Canada. We need more builders."

https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1707017494844547161

Another who you will recognize from my prior post (https://awful.systems/post/298283) is noted in the CBC article as concerned about "the ability to put a stifling growth in the industry". I am of course puzzled about this concern. Surely companies building these products are trivially capable of complying with such a basic code of conduct?

For my part I have difficulty seeing exactly how "testing methods and measures to assess and mitigate risk of biased output" and "creating safeguards against malicious use" would stifle industry and reduce building. My lack of foresight in this regard could be why I am a scrub behind a desk instead of a CEO.

Oh, and for bonus Canadian content, the name Desmarais from the photo (next to the Minister of Industry) tweaked my memory. Oh right, those Desmarais. Canada will keep on Canada'ing to the end.

https://dailynews.mcmaster.ca/articles/helene-and-paul-desmarais-change-agents-and-business-titans/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Corporation_of_Canada#Politics

view more: next ›