froztbyte

joined 2 years ago
[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 5 points 11 hours ago

citation/link/reference, please

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 10 points 11 hours ago (13 children)

Presumably ‘AI’ can make simple rules based decisions, if done properl

honest question: was this meant seriously, or in jest?

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 1 points 12 hours ago

is this a pokemon level? I ask for the benefit of 2600 shitty LLMs

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 2 points 12 hours ago

(precursor: imma be saying "I" a lot in this post. yes I mean a lot of these observations from a personal perspective, but I (haha) hope that it is also clear that I don't mean them from only that)

ha ha, only serious. What if none of this is new?

indeed I agree a lot of it is not. the method may vary but the motivation/philosophy does not

however I do believe (and, hell, this is why I'm posting) that there is value in differentiating (ed: non-mathematic reference) in the details

What if none of this is new?

If this is a dealbreaker today, then it should have been a dealbreaker

in concrete terms, I agree. it also largely squares with when google started being offensively useless/less-good (ime it varied by domain (which post-hoc I think also got impacted by search-eng product dev decisions? supposition, never tried to trace. don't think I ever will), affecting different ones at different timepoints)

then it shouldn’t be acceptable from DuckDuckGo, which has the same page-one results including an AI summary and panels

every time I see this shit pop up from DDG (or, similarly, in other contexts (e.g. AWS)) I every so "give it a test" and when it fucks up I send feedback of "please for the love of god stop forcing this shit on people" (<-- actual quote (sometimes more detail is added))

If summaries are unacceptable from Gemini, which has handily topped the leaderboards for weeks, then it’s not acceptable using models from any other vendor, including Alibaba, High-Flyer, Meta, Microsoft, or Twitter

exactly correct, and an entirely succinct explanation of a lot of at least some discomfort/rejection of these systems. there is a lot of detail and nuance into when/where/why people reject things built/relying on those systems, and I don't want to get sidetracked on those here (not least because lemmy's probably abysmal at margins), but they exist and I think it's well worth engaging with all those communities wrt the substantive parts of their nope.gifs

If machine learning isn’t acceptable in collating search results today

this is almost a false equivalence imo (and I'm somewhat surprised to see you make the statement). 1) (speaking broadly) at the risk of being of being presumptuous (wrt the diverse viewpoints held by many others in the community here), I don't really think a lot of people (here) would be ones going "ML==AI"? in fact, I feel like a number of the people would be ones (like myself) specifically trying to delineate between these. 2) "in collating" is a very specific subphrasing (and again I'm somewhat surprised to see you use it)

if fake, hallucinated, confabulated, or synthetic search results are ruining the Web today, then they were ruining the Web over two decades ago and have not lessened since

"yesssssssss... but"

there's a very, very, very long conversation that is to be had here. and, hell, one of my perpetually-promised posts (yes I know) is something that touches on this

remind me later to get into a full rant about point-by-point examples of how continually-encroaching synthetic-media situations have dovetailed with a coinciding devolution in critical thought and detailed coverage. (def later tho: it features at least 3 side rants, and it takes a lot out of me)

The issue is sheer data; ever since about 1991, before the Web existed, there has been too much data available on the Internet to search exhaustively and quickly

"yesssssssss... but"

again, I think a notable substantive point of differentiation (still not math) here is the particulars of the endeavour. the "how" and the "why" of responding to user queries is, under LLM world, substantively notably different to what it was under "the previous mode" (and yes I know it's progressive and there's detail here too, but I hope you can see "2010 goog" vs "2025 gemini goog" easily enough without elucidation)

The problem is recursive: when a user queries a popular search engine their results are populated by multiple different searchers using different techniques to learn what is relevant, because no one search strategy works at scale for most users asking most things.

(okay I never actually dug into the SE biz, but you've given me a thing to read about ty)

I’m not saying this to defend Google but to steer y’all away from uncanny-valley reactionism

I also ponder this myself sometimes, and I appreciate that part of it

The search-engine business model was always odious, but we were willing to tolerate it because it was very inaccurate and easy to game, like a silly automaton which obeys simple rules

y'know, I fucking hate the "we" here. (not directed at you and it's a whole thing but:) it's another false equivalence, brought on by abusive extractive fuckers. igwym but...... gah. rage.

(that touches on another post I've been trying to write for 3 years (this one I have not yet succeeded in clarifying (parts of it exists in some voicenotes to friends etc)))

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 14 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

but A LOT of engineering has a very very real existential threat. Think about designing buildings. You basically just need to know a lot of rules / tables and how things interact to know what's possible and the best practices

days since orangeposter (incorrectly) argued in certainty from 3 seconds of thought as to what they think is involved in a process: [0]

it's so fucking frustrating to know easy this bullshit is to see if you know a slight bit of anything, and doubly frustrating as to how much of the software world is this thinking. I know it's nothing particularly new and that our industry has been doing this for years, but scream

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 4 points 1 day ago

the author decided to stop publishing texts but instead ~~lecture~~ ~~tirade~~ preach unto the thronging youths directly

in person it's easier to do sketchy shit that won't immediately get caught by a wider audience, you see?

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 4 points 1 day ago

that was my first read, yeah... and then I realized that's probably not what the poster meant

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

on the one hand, I want to try find which ~~vendor marketing material~~ "research paper" that paragraph was copied from, but on the other... after yesterday's adventures trying to get data out of PDFs and c.o.n.s.t.a.n.t.l.y getting "hey how about this LLM? it's so good![0]" search results, I'm fucking exhausted

[0]: also most of these are paired with pages of claims of competence and feature boasts, and then a quiet "psssst: also it's a service and you send us your private data and we'll do with it whatever we want" as hidden as they can manage

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 9 points 1 day ago

my post: "Created: Monday, February 3rd, 2025 at 7:44:32 PM GMT+02:00"

wikipedia article: "11:58, 3 March 2025"

worst game of internet sweepstakes ever

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

thanks, I'll go check in the archives :)

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 4 points 2 days ago (3 children)

since the name popped up elsewhere: what's the feel on venkatesh rao?

(I often see the name in 🚩 places, but dunno if that's because the areas or because the person)

 

some of the sub’s friends are holding a conference although they’re still not totally comfortable to go public:

but buyers are warned that purchases will “require approval”

aww, the poor babies. even with literal nazis in the whitehouse they still feel uncomfortable to spout their weird shit

hopefully if this thing happens at all, someone documents the everliving hell out of every attendee

8
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by froztbyte@awful.systems to c/meta@awful.systems
 

some months ago I mentioned I couldn’t see comments in safari but could in fx (on ios). figured it out now: the 1Blocker “disable comments” filter sweepingly includes lemmy comment field types, but for some reason only on safari and not fx (despite apple forcing engine as they do)

the fix: add awful.systems as an allowed domain inside 1Blocker config

 

Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

Last week's thread

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)

 

“stepping away because I want to create the time and space to do my own exploration.”

yeah I completely believe you, weird lady. I too want to vaguely step into the warm embrace of my piles of ill-gotten gold, forgetting about the stressors of how to sell something that doesn’t exist and that you helped claim would be here really soon now. ahhh, bliss..

one’s gotta wonder about the timing of this announcement, right? like come the fuck on

 

I will say I'm not much of a fan of mysqls but uhhhhh this seems bad

13
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by froztbyte@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
 

saw this kicking around on the lobsters frontpage

IBM also includes a DPU for accelerating IO, along with an on-board AI accelerator

ah yes. an AI accelerator. for a chip that goes into a system that'll quite possibly have a lifespan measured in decade-partials. in environments so extremely up to date with the bleeding edge of technology that they are absolutely not losing their programmers to retirement. an AI acceleator for that. makes total sense.

imagine being the poor engineers who had to spec that out, design it, and get it actually existing. nevermind even the awe-inspiringly stunning disregard to reality that it takes for some management fuckhead(s) to have "steered" this

Funny enough, I asked why IBM had different terminology compared to the rest of the industry. They said IBM came up with the terminology first, and later on the industry adopted different terminology. It was all lighthearted and funny.

ah yes! funny! haha. not at all some weird insular shit from the same company that runs a worlds-apart platform with a control grip so strong it makes larry ellison check if they're infringing on anything actionable...

 

Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

 

Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

 

found this kicking around on one of the feeder sites a few days ago and only got to read it now

kinda neat. it's the sort of thing that you used to find quite a lot with keygens and other things prone to easter eggs, and that I don't really know of being as prevalent in more recent gaming and such

 

Need to make a primal scream without gathering footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh facts of Awful you'll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

 

there is some strong copium in the article, combined with a total description of having a massive gambling addiction without, y’know, actually realising it’s an addiction

remarkable stuff

 

there are some remarkable instances of bad behaviour in there already, but imagine being the sort of product team that thinks users being gaslit by a chatbot that they couldn’t even consent to choose to use is totes something to deliver without any modification or remark

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