Geek Stuff category archive

Sam and the crew parse the perfidy.

(Wait for Emma’s comment at about the 10:56 mark. It’s a gem.)

Aside:

I submit that this is a classic case of psychological projection. It’s not San Francisco that is suffering from a “mind virus.”

Like Elon Musk cares about San Francisco. Or anything or anyone other than himself.

You too can be assimilated by the Zuckerborg. But it’s likely easier if you are young and impressionable, and not a grumpy cynical old man like me.

I have a Facebook account, but I hardly ever use it any more, ever since i realized that I wan’t using Facebook.

Facebook was using me.

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*With apologies to H. P. Lovecraft.

William Pounstone, writing at Psychology Today Blogs, explains why AI lies. Given all the who shot john about AI, it is a valuable read. A nugget:

Why do LLMs (Large Language Models–ed.) often spin convincing but bogus answers (a.k.a. “hallucinations”)? The short answer is that LLMs have no innate conception of truth or falsehood.

Follow the link for context.

And, in more news of the not as smart as they think they are . . . .

I logged into my VPS tonight, as I do several times a week, to do routine maintenance. (Indeed, the last time I had to call my hosting provider’s most excellent tech support, the support tech was mildly surprised to find that my server was quite up-to-date. Having briefly worked in hosting provider tech support, I am not surprised that he was mildly surprised.)

I ran a virus scan (it came up clean as usual), then I ran an software update. The update updated the SQL database engine.

As I commonly do after an update, I went back to the backend of the blog and clicked on a random link as a test and got the dreaded “Error connecting to database” error. But, a moment later, everything was working again. I’m guessing that the database engine update hadn’t quite fully taken effect, but that’s just a guess. Anyway, just for grins and giggles, I restarted the server.

Everything seems to be working okay now.

Aside:

I’ve been using the same hosting provider for over a decade, ever since I stopped self-hosting. I went with it because someone I found trustworthy recommended it. I haven’t looked elsewhere because of the quality of its support techs. Fortunately, I don’t need them often, but they have never let me down.

Its support techs set the example.

You think they’re your “friends” on “social” media until you find out that they aren’t.

A 22-year-old man is accused of using Snapchat’s location-sharing feature to try to kidnap a woman and another person on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina, according to an indictment filed in federal court, WSOC reported.

The good news is that you can turn that “feature” off.

Much more at the link.

Aside:

I keep “location services” turned off on my cell phone unless I have a positive need for them, which is almost never, because I know how to read a map. Remember maps?

Big Tech doesn’t need to know when I take the cats to the vet.

I watched an episode of Monarch of the Glen tonight on Tubi.

Susan Hampshire, as Molly, did web search using a search engine named “Ogle” (I’m sure for legitimate naming issues).

Methinks that the pseudonym may be more accurate than the actual nym.

At Psychology Today Blogs, William Poundstone looks at the current hoopla over AI and puts it in context by recalling the Turing test and, later, a computer program called ELIZA, which was capable of carrying on limited conversations via text.

One passage in particular caught my eye. Poundstone cites a comment by MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum, the creator of ELIZA, reacting to how willing persons were to think of ELIZA as sentient:

Yet Weizenbaum was astounded at how many people found its canned statements convincing. “What I had not realized,” he wrote, “is that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people.”

One wonders what Weizenbaum might say today.

Follow the link for context.

If you are whelmed by the hyperbole about AI Chatbots and Large Language Models, I commend the segment on AI from the October 15, 2023 episode of Harry Shearer’s Le Show.

In it, Dr. Gary Marcus–er–annotates the recent discussion between Scott Kelley and Geoffrey Hinton, which took place on 60 Minutes.

I think you will find it enlightening.

Coincidentally, I participated in a Zoom meeting last night. It was quite good fun, thank you very much.

Those friends served to you by the algorithm, well, remember, there may not be much there there.

One more time, “social” media isn’t.

You don’t use it.

It uses you.

Atrios makes a pretty good case that, if history is not precisely repeating itself, it is certainly echoing loudly.

Computer security expert Bruce Schneier has written another long and detailed exploration of the current kerfuffle over AI.

In the light of all the real stupid billed as “artificial intelligence (for example), it is a timely and worthwhile read.

At the Psychology Today website, John Nasta muses on how Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics” might be applied to today’s AI Chatbots and Large Language Models.

Aside:

When I was a young ‘un, back in the olden days, Asimov was easily my favorite sci-fi author.

Debian Sid with the Fluxbox window manager on a ThinkPenguin laptop. Firefox and KeePassxc are shaded*. The wallpaper is from my collection.

Aside:

Debian Sid (aka “Debian Unstable”) is more stable than many Linux distributions’ (aka distros’) stable.

I now have two ThinkPenguin laptops, one of which I’m using as a media center. I’m quite satisfied with both of them.

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*No, you can’t shade or “roll up” windows on Windows. I also don’t think you can do it on iJunk, but I have relatively little experience with crapple that product.

Mageia v. 8 with the Plasma desktop environment. The wallpaper is from my collection.

I expect to upgrade to Mageia v. 9 tomorrow.

Addendum:

The upgrade was successful, but not without some speed bumps.