i've heard a few times that "waymos will make streets safer" so i went and looked up sf's traffic fatality statistics and they're pretty much identical
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sure enough machine translation has reasonably proven itself as a mostly public good, albeit at the expense of the translation industry
so i am aware that good things can come with bad prices, but i haven't really seen much good and i am seeing a lot of bad things
it literally breaks my heart that the public web now sits behind a proof of work system, forcing strangers to mine coins to buy access to webpages
because a bunch of tech companies are desperate for an poison-free training set
Machine translation is not even close to being decent in most (if not all) fields and language combinations. It is a useful tool for understanding the idea behind some text in another language, but mostly for personal (I'd say "irrelevant") cases. Any more than that and it's pretty obvious that professional translators are still needed. In technical fields, companies would have to trust a computer to translate things faithfully without making them liable to possible legal issues, for example. In more creative fields, the machine translated texts are lacking and do not transmit the intent of the original. Languages are not tools, they are culture and, thus, a machine won't be able to properly translate something. So, even in a field where "AI" has already "won", it's not that useful.
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@tef unfortunately, the original Big Web Dream began to die with the advent of mobile-first and social media. Now its death is only accelerating. Read @timbl's book about that.
Hi @gisgeek @tef,
#platforms. And they owe a lot to #sunsetting #Google #Reader. -
we're destroying the open web
we're burning down the closest thing i've ever seen in my life to the library of alexandria
and people are explaining to me how warm it keeps their hands, and maybe, in the future, the ashes will contain the secrets of the universe
@tef@mastodon.social i apologize for just jumping in here but i want to back up just how literal this destruction is. despite me using an ai blocker, my server is now at a constant 50%+ cpu usage, most of which coming from caddy and thus being unavoidable for me unless i write my own reverse proxy too (not too unlikely i suppose, but either way).
i am now experiencing up to 300-something requests per second that are confirmed to be coming from llm scrapers, usually hovering around 185 with regular spikes to 250. that means an average of 16 million requests per day. this translates to over 99.7% of requests to my sites coming from scrapers.
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i've heard a few times that "waymos will make streets safer" so i went and looked up sf's traffic fatality statistics and they're pretty much identical
i mean, there is a slight increase over the last two years but there's sufficient variance to avoid suggesting a trend
as i understand it, waymos tend to take people off busses and other forms of transit, rather than out of their own cars
so i'm doubtful it will lower deaths on the road, just the number of busses
This study has a lot of data and finds Waymo's safer for certain kinds of crashes...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/org/science/article/pii/S1538958825000815
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@otakup0pe when i visited the internet archive back in 2013, i took the tour
a big part of the speech involved "the natural enemy of libraries are governments" and explaining who or what would most likely see the death of the archive
and joking "we hope that by being in a church, they might have some second thoughts"
Since the 90s, if not 80s in the US, there has been a global offensive by federalized global (western) capital against EVERYTHING #public to be confiscated, liquidated, and privatized.
Why would "PUBLIC" #libraries escape this offensive. In most constitutions except for dictatorships and monarchies, to convert anything public to private you have to violate the access rights by ALL HUMANS, not even just citizens/residents
Pseudo environmental #GreenEnergy campaigns have been just a cover-up for this constitutional violation, converting public land/water-bodies into private "lots".
"Governments" are not the enemies of libraries, governments hostage to economic elites and processes are enemies of people (working people, the working poor). Unless we are to devolve to the ultimate fascism of the survival of the fittest (and best armed) .. we ... people .. collectively will need to govern our communities and protect our own rights.
Something that capitalism is violently opposing and destroying the possibility of.
#libertarian #communalism / #communism
#antifa (true antifascism is anti-capaitalism as fascism is nothing more than anti-communism)
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@tef@mastodon.social i apologize for just jumping in here but i want to back up just how literal this destruction is. despite me using an ai blocker, my server is now at a constant 50%+ cpu usage, most of which coming from caddy and thus being unavoidable for me unless i write my own reverse proxy too (not too unlikely i suppose, but either way).
i am now experiencing up to 300-something requests per second that are confirmed to be coming from llm scrapers, usually hovering around 185 with regular spikes to 250. that means an average of 16 million requests per day. this translates to over 99.7% of requests to my sites coming from scrapers.
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i've heard a few times that "waymos will make streets safer" so i went and looked up sf's traffic fatality statistics and they're pretty much identical
i mean, there is a slight increase over the last two years but there's sufficient variance to avoid suggesting a trend
as i understand it, waymos tend to take people off busses and other forms of transit, rather than out of their own cars
so i'm doubtful it will lower deaths on the road, just the number of busses
@tef Funny how it's exactly the same as with Uber years ago. Which was marketed as a solution for private cars, but in fact was replacing public transit:
https://48hills.org/2024/09/uber-and-lyft-are-undermining-public-transit-a-new-study-shows/
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the worst bit? i still like machine learning, i still think stochastic approaches can have benefits
but if i wrote software that pushed vulnerable teenagers to suicide, or enabled people to sexually harass strangers with pornographic forgeries
i would take a step back from the keyboard and ask my good buddy hans, "are we the baddies"
or at least, i hope i'd ask those hard questions
@tef @bert_hubert BUT THE MONEY / FIRST MOVER ADVANTAGE / BEING THE PERSON WHO OWNS ALL OF THE LABOUR IN THE WORLD etc
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i don't want to be all "you are not immune to propaganda" but a lot of these arguments prey on optimism and hope that technology can lift people up
but when you start to examine the rhetoric, like "what if <imaginary circumstance where the tools are useful>"
or "bad thing? that's a lack of training and dicipline"
it just feels like gun logic in a new outfit
@tef @davidgerard “The only way to stop a bad guy with an AI is a good guy with an AI.”—Doctorow, possibly
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@tef I think the first part is one of the things that makes me extra angry. Much of what is now called "AI" is not exactly new or novel, we have used machine learning and generally stochastic approaches for ages, and it's great. I have applications where I can specifically activate a machine learning approach and it makes sense. But the lens of capitalism has 'forced' the companies to now slap a butthole next to the label, add a buzzword-adjective like "deep" and make it an "AI"-feature to compete. This sucks, I want to be happy using good software, not feel shame, leave us alone, fuck off with your capitalism
@janamarie @tef yeah, I hate the way these people vandalize language. I grew up as a cyberpunk fan excited by AI, robotics, space exploration and cryptography. Now I have to constantly append "but not like that" every time I talk about things that interest me. I guess I'm lucky I was never deeply interested in quantum physics. If they inflate a guitar or bicycle bubble next I'm going to lose it
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@Klara see also wat tyler i guess
@tef I wasn’t thinking about peasants, but about the protest/fights between craft guilds and whoever installed the clocks and control system.
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i've heard a few times that "waymos will make streets safer" so i went and looked up sf's traffic fatality statistics and they're pretty much identical
i mean, there is a slight increase over the last two years but there's sufficient variance to avoid suggesting a trend
as i understand it, waymos tend to take people off busses and other forms of transit, rather than out of their own cars
so i'm doubtful it will lower deaths on the road, just the number of busses
@tef Self-driving cars, have the *potential* to be safer, but only as part of a holistic change to the way we approach transportation and urban planning as a society that would include decreasing the need and desire for individual conveyances in the first place. Most of the rest of that change kinda has to happen *first* before self-driving cars will actually be able to provide any benefit.
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we're destroying the open web
we're burning down the closest thing i've ever seen in my life to the library of alexandria
and people are explaining to me how warm it keeps their hands, and maybe, in the future, the ashes will contain the secrets of the universe
@tef i do wonder if this is intentional, now that the internet has been fully scraped it doesn't need to exist any more and in fact must not because it can't be monetized/controlled like an llm service can be
i despair
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it feels like a lot of the arguments i hear boil down to "what if none of the bad things were happening right now, and instead, good things happened instead"
and sure, if that were true, things would be good
but, well, all of the bad things are happening already and none of the good things are any closer to appearing
and i'm just not confident "wait and see if everything reverses course" is a sensible way to evaluate the impact of new technologies
@tef What if the temperature of the water starts going back down again, magically? Then you frogs who jumped out are going to look pretty foolish!
Did I say water and frogs? What if climate change fixes itself magically? Why don't we wait and see?
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i've heard a few times that "waymos will make streets safer" so i went and looked up sf's traffic fatality statistics and they're pretty much identical
i mean, there is a slight increase over the last two years but there's sufficient variance to avoid suggesting a trend
as i understand it, waymos tend to take people off busses and other forms of transit, rather than out of their own cars
so i'm doubtful it will lower deaths on the road, just the number of busses
@tef Does anybody believe that in private investor pitches, Elon Musk tells people that RoboTaxis will mean that nobody needs to buy a Tesla? No!
He tells investors that the market for RoboTaxis are all the municipal transit lines everywhere, and that while Waymo may look like competition, they're actually frenemies dismantling public transit.
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i've heard a few times that "waymos will make streets safer" so i went and looked up sf's traffic fatality statistics and they're pretty much identical
i mean, there is a slight increase over the last two years but there's sufficient variance to avoid suggesting a trend
as i understand it, waymos tend to take people off busses and other forms of transit, rather than out of their own cars
so i'm doubtful it will lower deaths on the road, just the number of busses
@tef I suspect a Waymo is more likely to keep to the speed limit and less likely to run me over than a human driver.
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@EndlessMason @tef "The origin point for nearly all of those 'you work harder than a medieval peasant' memes and articles is Juliet Schor’s The Overworked American (1993). The argument has been debunked quite a few times…" — https://acoup.blog/2025/09/05/collections-life-work-death-and-the-peasant-part-ivb-working-days/
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we're destroying the open web
we're burning down the closest thing i've ever seen in my life to the library of alexandria
and people are explaining to me how warm it keeps their hands, and maybe, in the future, the ashes will contain the secrets of the universe
@tef I think we are more likely to be destroyed by a Vogon construction crew.
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@vfig @EndlessMason the point i was making in the post is that timekeeping, albeit good, has also been used as a means of control, and i am using the meme of a medieval peasant to satirise the belief that technology will save us
@tef @vfig @EndlessMason Certainly work can be thought of as a pleasure or a burden to some degree. Intensive production whether manual or automated accelerates #alienation and #conflict Overproduction is not sustainable and idleness does not produce creativity. All, is not for the best if people don’t do their best for each other. If just for a very few technology serves and protects those who abuse and destroy capital. Work, is for the worst! The good is for the many, the worst is for the few.
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the worst bit? i still like machine learning, i still think stochastic approaches can have benefits
but if i wrote software that pushed vulnerable teenagers to suicide, or enabled people to sexually harass strangers with pornographic forgeries
i would take a step back from the keyboard and ask my good buddy hans, "are we the baddies"
or at least, i hope i'd ask those hard questions
@tef I listened to an excellent podcast yesterday on 'Neuroprivacy' - a brilliant example of cooperation between ethical/legal and technical expertise working very hard to make new neurotechnologies a net positive by considering and guarding against social harms whilst the technology is still developing.
From the @eff podcast:
https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/1c515ea8-cb6d-4f72-8d17-bc9b7a566869/episodes/3955c653-7346-44d2-82e2-0238931bcfd9/audio/6ce9ce71-a66a-46ba-9472-890fadb7ff08/default_tc.mp3
