It occurs to me that Ken Thompson's classic lecture "Reflections on Trusting Trust" has a LOT to say about code generation using LLMs.
The Thompson self-propagating UNIX hack that he described was a lot like a prompt injection attack (the right parsed input could trigger an unexpected output via opaque-to-programmer intermediate steps).
cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers…
mastodon.social/@gmh/114132067…
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From a 1943 article. "Standard contracts in particular could thus become effective instruments in the hands of powerful industrial and commercial overlords enabling them to impose a new feudal order of their own making upon a vast host of vassals."
Well.
Cambridge doesn’t operate on the basis of teaching you how to do things; it just assumes you can and looks and says “how sad” if you e.g. turn out to have no idea how to write an essay.
(Thing I just wrote in DMs, and thought worth grousing about in public.)
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Elite on the Apple II contains code by Ian Bell and David Braben.
No surprises there.
But did you know it also contains code by Steve Wozniak, Randy Wigginton and Rob Northen?
Find out why in my latest deep dive.
elite.bbcelite.com/deep_dives/…
#retrocomputing #retrogaming #8bit #apple #elite
A deep dive into file operations with embedded Apple DOS in Apple II Eliteelite.bbcelite.com
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(Via the OU Contract Law module). Are terms and conditions better with 1990s computer music?
For Safer Internet Day this year, we focused on our Terms of Service and how familiarising yourself with them can improve your Habbo experience.YouTube
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That works for people switching within Star Fleet, but what if I were a yoga instructor with some sort of injury and decided to retrain as a therapist and became an expert on idk, space station agoaphobia? That would be moving from a civilian role to something at least Star Fleet adjacent.
... I guess there's the TNG bartender....
They end up in the Red Shirts section and quickly get destroyed.
The fleet thinking is 'mature students have good wide range of experience therefore should survive unfamiliar conditions'. Unfortunately, lack of O2 is not something you can get used to by experience.
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Elon Musk is using X to target the European Union, increasing anti-EU feelings and supporting far-right parties. Help us stopping him.stopelon
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that …The Poetry Foundation
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I strongly dislike the fact that we now basically have to reevaluate all domains under management, and the infrastructure that depends on the associated DNS records, in light of this new insider threat from an asshole with a sharpie.
Especially given how eager US tech companies are to comply with whatever these fuckers come up with next.
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I was thinking over/into my beer just now. I want there to be a website for trans eggs. Is there one? Not just useful information, but actually something much closer to advertising. There's this narrative that shapes being trans as undesirable, faulty, at best a disorder to be treated and pitied.
But being trans is amazing, and I think we should be shouting about it to as many people who need to hear as we can reach.
A friend is having surgery at the same hospital I was in almost three years ago. It's bringing back so many happy memories, of daft things and frets, of little surprises and joys.
When trans women make ourselves more truly who we are, we do amazing things. Ain't no power in the 'verse can stop us.
I am listening on Radio 4 to Labour handing the next general election to Reform. It’s scary just how stupid they are that they don’t see that this is what they are doing.
Also, for far too many people, fucking terrifying.
This is not good: Apple ordered to open encrypted user accounts globally to UK spying. The secret order would give the UK access to encrypted backups belonging to any user — not just Brits.
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Do I know any psychologists on here? I'm wondering if there's been significant study of the variety of ways trans people relate to and think/feel about their pretransition selves. If that's even psychology!
(I could just go diving in, looking for papers, but that often fails in subjects I know little about because I lack the terminology to know what I'm looking for.)
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@Zumbador I think I agree. I think there are a lot of great counsellors in this space with kind of "meso" scale experience, things they've learnt from many patients, etc. I think this and support groups etc is probably the best place to look.
But psychology in the paper-mill" "Professor of Brainiology, OBE, CBE, bar, bar, sense at the University of Old", I'd be very skeptical about.
Throughout history, as a profession they always seem to be playing catch up with reality and enabling lots of horrible things done by states. It seem like quite a foetid hunting ground.
@Zumbador
I don't like to be abstract political, so here's a concrete example from a paper on Autism.
There was an experiment which showed that autistic people were more consistent in applying professed beliefs in private (a faked experiment where subjects were asked to eat taboo-animal meet in exchange for money, in company and alone).
This increased consistency was pathologised as autistic people failing to adapt to social situations by not being hypocritical in private. They did brain scans and stuff to show the hypocrisy nexus and suggested interventions to fire it up in autistic people.
I suspect this is very likely how that kind of psychology works in the trans space too.
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My therapist introduced me to the concept of RSD (rejection sensitive dysphoria) last week and it is a very powerful match for a lot of what’s in my head.
It makes sense in this context that I appreciate my strength training sessions because I only ever get positive feedback and encouragement.
Signs you may be working with mathematicians...
my $default_quota='9.8G'; # Based on 1st Feigenbaum constant
Talk to me about lipstick, my combined soshul masses!
In particular, how the hell do you apply the stuff when you don't really have any lips to speak of? I either end up with the barely perceptible impression I might have drunk some red wine or JACKSON POLLOCK CRAYON EDITION.
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"What the banker saw. The farce of constructive notice in undue influence cases".
Not a paper that actually exists or that I am equipped to write but nevertheless one I would totally read if it did.
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No big deal just Linux running in a PDF.
Linux running inside a PDF file via a RISC-V emulator - ading2210/linuxpdfGitHub
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Cis male friend sent me this, which is interesting. Most of the "low confidence" stuff I can take or leave but occasionally switching around formulations of allegedly the same dose of E seems very plausible; friends have switched from valerate to hemihydrate and had a bit of a growth spurt.
wordsmith.social/elilla/i-grew…
I started HRT at 34; I'm now just 41. This is how my breasts look after 6½ years of transition: In a well-fitted bra Nude, front P...elilla & friends’ very occasional blog thing
Cavyherd
Unknown parent • • •@8r3n7 @graydon @bsdphk
Oh, absolutely 100%. & I can hear the whole chorus of "but that can't work & here's why—!" which all devolve to "bc we wanna but we don't want to be held accountable for the negative consequences."
It would be •fascinating• to live in a society where people were actually •mindful• of the negative (to others) consequences of their actions.
I have a hard time even imagining it.
Colman Reilly
Unknown parent • • •@graydon @bsdphk criminality immediately strips the limited company protection from directors as it is.
The problem is that the authorities seldom prosecute on that basis. Tax authorities will use it to pursue individuals for company debt if they can though.
(And removing limited liability would make running businesses even less possible for the not-actually-rich who’d have to take on all the risks of civil action personally.)
Autolycus 🏴☠️
Unknown parent • • •@graydon @bsdphk I think fines don't work on the rich because the fines just aren't significant enough.
Instead of jail time, all we would really have to do is consider money earned by corporate law-breakers as ill-gotten gains. Direct a company to break laws as the CEO? Every penny you made from that company is forfeit, including money you made by investing your ill-gotten gains.
Colman Reilly
Unknown parent • • •@colo_lee @graydon @bsdphk and I wouldn’t run an web site providing company in case we caught liability for something a client did.
We’re well into “tell me you have no clue without telling me you have no clue” territory here. 🙄
Colman Reilly
Unknown parent • • •@colo_lee @graydon @bsdphk I believe the US has a specific problem where the concept of corporate legal personhood and natural personhood has become conflated in a way that isn’t true elsewhere.
Everywhere has an enforcement problem.
Graydon
in reply to Colman Reilly • • •@Colman @bsdphk The US organization for gymnastics got convicted of running a child sex ring and heavily fined. It used a standard corporate mechanism to assign all its obligations to one corporation and all its assets and ongoing revenue to another corporation, and paid no fines. Exxon didn't even pay meaningful fines over Exxon Valdez in the 80s. Certainly no directors went to jail.
The point would not be to keep things as they are; things-as-they-are is collapsing agriculture.
Token Sane Person
Unknown parent • • •cuan_knaggs
Unknown parent • • •Erik Bosman
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Alexandra Lanes likes this.
Charlie Stross
Unknown parent • • •