Geek Stuff category archive

At Psychology Today Blogs, Bill Sullivan offers yet more evidence that “social” media isn’t, particular for the young. Here’s a bit of his article:

Studies have shown that social media use, especially among younger people, increases materialism—a drive to accumulate and flaunt money and possessions. Such a mindset implies that external goods like Italian sports cars, Cartier watches, or gourmet dining are signs of a person’s status. Materialists gauge their own worth—and the worth of other people—by how much money and bling they’ve acquired, rather than judging internal goods like character. The materialistic mindset fosters attitudes of competition, envy, and greed.

Madonna’s claim that we are living in a material world is backed by convincing data.

Follow the link, then be sure to post it to your Zuckerborg or Muskrat page.

Under-valuation frolics.

Just because you see–er–hear it on a computer–er–device, it ain’t necessarily so.

The Second Circuit has referred attorney Jae S. Lee to a grievance panel for citing a fake case made up by ChatGPT in a complaint and never checking to see if the case spit out by the AI was real.

Details at the link.

A Consumer Reports study details the extent to which you have been assimilated by the Zuckerborg and its enablers. Indeed, perhaps the most astounding bit in the report is the number of Zuckerborg enablers who “share” your data with Facebook.

Follow the link for the article.

Using a panel of 709 volunteers who shared archives of their Facebook data, Consumer Reports found that a total of 186,892 companies sent data about them to the social network. On average, each participant in the study had their data sent to Facebook by 2,230 companies. That number varied significantly, with some panelists’ data listing over 7,000 companies providing their data.

One more time, “social” media isn’t.

You don’t use “social” media. It uses you.

H/T Bruce Schneier for the head up.

It turns out that Teslas don’t seem to like really cold weather. Here’s a bit of the report from The Register:

In the Oak Brook suburb of Chicago, Illinois, where temperatures have routinely dipped way below freezing, local media reported public charging stations turning into “car graveyards” because motorists were unable to power their vehicles.

“Nothing. No juice. Still on zero percent, and this is like three hours being out here after being out here three hours yesterday,” Tesla owner Tyler Beard told Fox 32.

He wasn’t alone. Dozens of cars were reportedly lined up and abandoned at the Tesla supercharging station in Oak Brook along with multiple charging stations around Chicago.

It turns out, when persons as “AI” questions about case law, “AI” tends to just make stuff up “hallucinate,” to use the term from the article at Above the Law.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Mark Bertin reminds us that

Our devices’ software is engineered around a concept called persuasive design. Companies channel countless research dollars into maximizing profit gained by influencing where we spend our time online. Tech companies foundationally, intentionally, and continually collect our information while honing methods that can hold and disrupt our attention.

Follow the link for some suggestions as to how to escape the seductive lure of the algorithm.

Noah Feldman, Bloomberg columnist and (I did now that he is a) Harvard law professor, takes a look at the New York Times’s suit against Microsoft and OpenAI for copyright infringement. I can’t say that it’s an exciting read, but, given the who-shot-john and over-the-top hype about “AI,” I think it’s a worthwhile one.

Here’s a bit:

Once you know the law, you can guess roughly how the legal arguments in the case are going to go. The New York Times will point to examples where a user asks a question of ChatGPT or Bing and it replies with something substantially like a New York Times article. The newspaper will observe that ChatGPT is part of a business and charges fees for access to its latest versions, and that Bing is a core part of Microsoft’s business. The New York Times will emphasize the creative aspects of journalism. Above all, it will argue that if you can ask an LLM-powered search engine for the day’s news, and get content drawn directly from The New York Times, that will substantially harm and maybe even kill The New York Times’ business model.

Most of these points are plausible legal arguments. But OpenAI and Microsoft will be prepared for them. They’ll likely respond by saying that their LLM doesn’t copy; rather, it learns and makes statistical predictions to produce new answers.