burning teslas owned by random people when it seems it would be easier to burn this fucking nazi asshole?
Because simply in practical terms, it’s the other way around. There’s a Tesla right next door, but only one Musk somewhere, probably not where you are. And mostly, one has personal bodyguards, while the others just sit on the road.
Offering a slight damper / correction:
This is about two things (design and ownership), which are correlated, but not identical.
Malicious design can be things like:
Obviously, these patterns and practices can also be applied to a FOSS instance you own. There is less incentive to do so if the profit motive is removed - which makes a huge difference.
These design patterns are fundamentally about making user numbers go up. Attract more users, keep them on your platform longer, make them leave less. And a portion of user guidance mixed in. None of that is inherently evil, to some degree even desireable, and to some extent unavoidable to offer a functional service.
Some users may expect a feed like lemmy to browse indefinitely, since they find it inconvenient to have to click to go to the ‘next page’. And because they got used to this feature elsewhere. Others already see this as a dark pattern.
I just wanted to highlight how some of the malicious stuff may still be present in the fediverse, without any company involved. Here, we’re kind of in charge on both sides: Each is responsible for their own user agency (like controlling your online hours, or what sites you visit), and collectively to decide what user experience we want to shape (which might include controverse patterns).
I spent way too many words on this. Mostly I agree with you! And overall, users will encounter far less malicious patterns on FOSS.
[Edit: Formatting]
An (intuitively) working search would be a great step ahead. It should find and show things if they exist, and only show no results if they do not. That a plethora of external tools exist to meet these basic needs shows both how much this is needed, and how much it is broken.
I also feel I have more luck finding communities if searching for ‘all’, instead of ‘communities’. Don’t make me add cryptic chars to my search to make it work. Do that for me in the background if necessary.
It’s been long since I’ve been using it, but iirc, it’s impossible or painful to search for a specific community in your subscribed list.
From the title, I had a question and found the answer in the FAQ:
What’s an unconference?
An unconference is a conference in which the participants – rather than the organizers – decide which sessions happen each day and on which topics. In the many years we have been organizing unconferences, we have found that for complex subjects like the Fediverse, attendees get more value (and fun!) out of unconferences than from traditional conferences. Sounds disorganized? It did to us, too, until we actually experienced our first one. So don’t worry, it will be fine :-)
Here are some suggestions for how to prepare for an unconference.
And this is another issue which hinders discoverability. It’s nice there are tools and workarounds but their existence also signals the issue exists.
I didn’t say able to locate I said there being a list.
Are you confusing comments?
I see this in the referred comment:
having the capability to locate
While the word “list” does not appear.
But mostly I think we should try to read the message, not focus on single words.
Exactly this. It’s often about finding the right balance between technically optimal, and socially feasible (lacking the right phrase here).
The nerds brimming with technical expertise often neglect the second point.
Oh - wow! I was about to complain about how https://join-lemmy.org/ is a shining bad example in this regard, talking about server stuff right away and hiding how Lemmy actually looks until page 3, but apparently they changed that and improved it drastically. Cool, good job!
Anyways.
For collaborative projects especially, it is important to strike a balance between tech and social aspects. Making poor tech choices will put people off. But making your project less accessible will also result in less people joining. It’s crucial to find a good balance here. For many coming from the tech side, this usually means making far more concessions to the social side than intuitively feels right.
When people “farm” for fake internet pointe by appealing to the oppinions of everyone else it leads to people just expressing one “right” (popular) oppinion.
We have the same result already, for several reasons. One is, we do have karma within threads.
Another is, people will get backlash for voicing the “wrong” opinion even if there is no point system. People happily reply to correct someone.
That’s like post #10 I see from random users proposing we should somehow run ads or whatever to finance big instances.
I haven’t seen a single statement going in that direction from big instances themselves. None of those posts referred to anything.
Is it just overconcerned people worrying about things which are not their problem? I assume people who can run a big instance would notice if they are getting into financial troubles. As long as they don’t speak up, I would conclude we don’t have to worry. The current model (whatever it is) seems to work well enough. Did they ask for advice, do they need advice?
Maybe it’s that people are so used to being forced to see ads and pay half their wage for insulin that they cannot imagine nice things exist.
I think we should try to keep it nice, and not revert to capitalist enshittification prematurely, without any necessity.
We currently have more than 1000 instances on Lemmy. Maybe some do run ads, who knows. You can join them if you like, or host your own.
Show the problem exists which you try to solve. Point to instances who struggle financially, who consider running ads, something like that.
Thanks again, though just for the record, that didn’t help either. It’s alright, I’m used to the Thunderbird lags. Let’s stop here :)
Then let me spell it out: If ChatGPT convinces a child to wash their hands with self-made bleach, be sure to expect lawsuits and a shit storm coming for OpenAI.
If that occurs, but no liability can be found on the side of ChatGPT, be sure to expect petitions and a shit storm coming for legislators.
We generally expect individuals and companies to behave in society with peace and safety in mind, including strangers and minors.
Liabilities and regulations exist for these reasons.
Do car manufacturers get in trouble when someone runs somebody over?
Yes, if it can be shown the accident was partially caused by the manufacturer’s neglect. If a safety measure was not in place or did not work properly. Or if it happens suspiciously more often with models from this brand. Apart from solid legal trouble, they can get into PR trouble if many people start to think that way, no matter if it’s true.
If it has the information, why not?
Naive altruistic reply: To prevent harm.
Cynic reply: To prevent liabilities.
If the restaurant refuses to put your fries into your coffee, because that’s not on the menu, then that’s their call. Can be for many reasons, but it’s literally their business, not yours.
If we replace fries with fuse, and coffee with gun powder, I hope there are more regulations in place. What they sell and to whom and in which form affects more people than just buyer and seller.
Although I find it pretty surprising corporations self-regulate faster than lawmakers can say ‘AI’ in this case. That’s odd.
I’m from your camp but noticed I used ChatGPT and the like less and less over the past months. I feel they became less and less useful and more generic. In Februar or March, they were my go to tools for many tasks. I reverted back to old-fashioned search engines and other methods, because it just became too tedious to dance around the ethics landmines, to ignore the verbose disclaimers, to convince the model my request is a legit use case. Also the error ratio went up by a lot. It may be a tame lapdog, but it also lacks bite now.
Interesting, may I ask you a question regarding uncensored local / censored hosted LLMs in comparison?
There is this idea censorship is required to some degree to generate more useful output. In a sense, we somehow have to tell the model which output we appreciate and which we don’t, so that it can develop a bias to produce more of the appreciated stuff.
In this sense, an uncensored model would be no better than a million monkeys on typewriters. Do we differentiate between technically necessary bias, and political agenda, is that possible? Do uncensored models produce more nonsense?
However, I think people should experiment with what I call “open source universes”, which is basically creating shared universes that are open source. Maybe even make some open source RPG system with it too, so we could have an open source alternative to the likes of D&D, WH40k, etc. At one point I tried to make something like this, but the issue was that it was based on an old webcomic idea of mine, which I started working on when I had totally different views on many things. Might revisit it with different ideas later on.
Haven’t played any of those, but I think they (and more) exist for a long time already: https://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Open_Game_Systems
They’re used to a decade or longer on Twitter and Facebook. So any new and improved protocol would split the user base and so struggle to gain traction.
Could that be an inherent issue, no matter how you approach it? The issue might be that any social IT system which gains traction is already 10 years outdated. If true, it would mean we could start making something new now, which might be popular in 10 years, but then unable to effectively deal with whatever people deem essential in 10 years.
I appreciated the advice! Found the setting, which was indeed low. Raised it to 200 MB and to require manual confirmation. Today I was asked if I want to compress. The sad part is, the freezes continued in between. So this was not the cause, but thank you still.
Headline:
TERRIBLE THINGS HAPPENED TO MONKEYS AFTER GETTING NEURALINK IMPLANTS, ACCORDING TO VETERINARY RECORDS
What are these terrible things?
Up to a dozen monkeys suffered grisly fates after receiving a Neuralink implant, including brain swelling and partial paralysis.
First is the case of the monkey “Animal 20.” In December 2019, an internal part of the brain implant being inserted into the primate “broke off” during surgery. Later that night, the monkey scratched at the implant site, drawing blood, and yanked on the implant, partially dislodging it. Follow-up surgery discovered that the wound was infected, but that the placement of the implant prevented treatment. The monkey was euthanized the next month.
Before that, a female monkey designated “Animal 15” began to press her head against the ground after receiving the brain implant, pick at the site until it bled, and eventually lost coordination, shivering when personnel entered the room. Scientists discovered she had brain bleeding, and in March 2019, she too was euthanized.
The following year, a primate called “Animal 22” was put down in March 2020 after its brain implant became so loose that the screws attaching it to the skull “could easily be lifted out,” according to a necropsy report.
“The failure of this implant can be considered purely mechanical and not exacerbated by infection,” the necropsy states.
As Wired notes, that statement alone seemingly contradicts Musk’s claims that no monkeys directly died from Neuralink brain implants.
And so would the account of an ex-Neuralink employee, who told Wired that Musk’s claims that the monkeys were already terminally ill are “ridiculous,” even a “straight-up fabrication.”
“We had these monkeys for a year or so before any surgery was performed,” the ex-employee said.
The testimony of an anonymous scientist conducting research at CNPRC seems to corroborate the ex-employee’s allegations.
“These are pretty young monkeys,” they told the magazine. “It’s hard to imagine these monkeys, who were not adults, were terminal for some reason.”
Similar to the arbitrarily defined density of other stuff in the same orbit. We need to draw lines somewhere to impose categories on nature.