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Dr. WiFi. Linux kernel hacker at Red Hat. Networking, XDP, etc. He/Him.
AI, university nonsense
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I (and my whole department) just got an "urgent" email request to let our dean and provost know "how we plan to infuse genAI into our teaching and curriculum" (we are a writing, rhetoric, and human communication department). 😑🤦

Anyway, here's what I sent back:

"Encourgaging students’ Own Voices and standing against linguistic homogenization are two primary concerns of writing studies as a discipline, and these concerns are especially important both to first-year college writing courses and the pluralistic goals of technical and professional writing environments. There is also a substantial and growing body of research that demonstrates that using genAI and similar applications as instructional tools, “tutors,” or “collaborators” results in cognitive costs that degrade students’ working memory, accelerate user deskilling, undermine students’ development of higher order thinking skills, and decrease student motivation for learning.

For these reasons, not to mention for reasons of concern regarding environmental cost and ethical provenance, I am participating in the movement to Refuse GenAI in writing studies. While in my writing courses students are certainly invited to engage in discussion of important issues surrounding both AI adoption by the academy and workplace and AI refusal as a principled response to such breakaway adoption, I do not integrate any AI into my writing curriculum or my students’ writing practice."

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As a consoling thought, when you look outside of the so-called "Western World", it becomes clear that have already lost.

The surge in around here is in part a last-ditch effort to prop up a failing business model. This might "work" for a while, but it can only delay the end of the Fossil Fuel Age, not stop it.

Which doesn't make fighting fascism unimportant, of course. Any harm we can stop, we should. But they _will_ lose this, in the end.

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Finding a business model for an open source projects is really hard, but "pay us to remove the catgirl pictures if you want to look professional" is one of the coolest attempts I've seen so far:
https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper

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Edited 1 month ago

Why use a URL shortener when you can use a phishy URL extender?

https://phishyurl.com/

Keep your security people alert and awake, generate phishing-looking redirecting links

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The Amphora of Great Intelligence (AGI)

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Edited 1 month ago
SIGNAL - PRIVACY ALERT

Seems that Google are up to their AI tricks again with Android. Gboard is caching typed content by default and Gemini Assistant, and one assumes by extension Google, apparently has access to chats. Samsung not innocent on this either apparently.

So from what I understand about current outrage it's best to goto Signal - Settings - Messages and set to 'No name or message' to prevent Android from reading notifications

AND

Goto Signal - Settings - Privacy and enable Incognito Keyboard. But make sure you use a keyboard that respects this setting.

These really should not be the default settings on a privacy product like @signalapp

PS. I de-Googled my life a decade ago and feel much better for it. ;)

#Signal
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I've been following this "mutual safety standards recognition" stuff out of the US/EU talks. This could be really, really bad.

It would mean that US vehicles, like those giant dangerous SUVs and pickup trucks, could be freely imported into the EU in volume without having to pass EU vehicle safety standards (like pedestrian safety).

I haven't seen any organised resistance to this. Does anybody know any other organisations that are fighting this?

https://etsc.eu/etsc-mutual-recognition-deal-with-u-s-will-cost-lives-on-europes-roads/

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Toke Høiland-Jørgensen

Bought a second-hand Pixel 9a and installed @GrapheneOS on it. Very smooth process. Going to see if this can be my daily driver without any of the Play stuff installed...
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The Norwegian Government has made a new tourism ad, and it's surprsingly honest and informative! 🇳🇴

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYjooTz_1lA

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Debian Linux was officially founded by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. That's 32 years of stable, free, and opensource computing. From a single kernel, it has grown to parent some of the most popular OSes in the world. Cheers to the one that started it all! Happy 32nd birthday to the beloved mother of all distros!! 🥰 🍰

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A lot of things happen in Linux kernel development on a daily basis. It's a bummer that what often makes the rounds of Linux web sites is just when Linus writes something that can be portrayed as "Linus flames so-and-so" or whatever.

The kernel is not my beat, but I bet one could find many examples of kernel developers being supportive, positive, or just saying interesting or weird things that are quoteworthy... but it's almost always "Linus says $negative_thing".

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here's a few settings you may wish to consider for your firefox's about:config page.

browser.ml.chat.enabled = false
browser.ml.chat.shortcuts = false
browser.ml.chat.shortcuts.custom = false
browser.ml.chat.sidebar = false
browser.ml.enable = false
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From my "Geek dates" calendar:

On this day in 1988 Dade "Zero Cool" was sentenced to not use computers or touch-tone telephones until he was 18 years old. He'd crashed 1507 computer systems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers_(film)#Plot

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Jonathan Corbet

"I credit a good portion of my success to knowledge and insight I've gained from lwn articles."

("sophacles" on HN)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44747514

That is what we want @lwn to be, so it is nice to read a comment like that.
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Hello here's a writeup of what's really happening with the new secure boot certificates and how your computer is going to carry on working just fine: https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/72892.html

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"What you have is, in essence, a very grassroots and cheap approach to launder misinformation to the public.”

From @feed - Google’s AI Is Destroying Search, the Internet, and Your Brain

Google’s AI Overview, which is easy to fool into stating nonsense as fact, is stopping people from finding and supporting small businesses and credible sources.

https://www.404media.co/googles-ai-is-destroying-search-the-internet-and-your-brain/

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Edited 3 months ago

We are a very digital society in Denmark, this is generally a very good things, but not when the banks decide we *must* use Google to log in to our accounts...

Absolutely agree with @jeppe here

https://jyllands-posten.dk/debat/breve/ECE18376402/du-er-tvunget-til-at-tillade-google-at-overvaage-og-saelge-dig/

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