Notices by Dan Wineman (dwineman@xoxo.zone)

@catfish_man @squeakypancakes @inthehands Last time we did science that way, the western world ended up believing that heavier objects fall faster for a couple thousand years.

@jenniferplusplus @inthehands Not to diminish any of this, but it looks like the degree revocations are temporary, and for “students” (not alumni), with some kind of process for reinstatement. I can’t tell if this means they’ve revoked the potential to earn a degree, or revoked already-earned undergrad degrees from current graduate students, or what. But these details seem to have been overlooked by everyone posting about it.

https://communications.news.columbia.edu/news/university-statement-regarding-ujb-determinations

@inthehands @sinbad @mcc This is excellent. Thanks for sharing it.

@sinbad @inthehands @mcc This is why it’s such a foolish and tragic mistake to delegate the job to AI, but guess what everyone is going to do anyway. Writing is teaching and teaching is understanding and you can’t solve problems you don’t understand.

@inthehands I can’t tell how widespread it is, but some evangelicals are apparently being taught to avoid the “sin of empathy” as neo-Christian doctrine. (Google the phrase; I don’t want to link to it.) Seems like an inevitable consequence of prosperity gospel: if financial success is a gift from God, then that god must not care for the poor, thus compassion itself is sinful. Disgusting and perverse on every level.

@davidcelis @adam Though the context was race and not gender identity, MLK’s words in “Letter from Birmingham Jail” seem very applicable here. Last summer it became clear to me that Manton cared deeply about order and not at all about justice.

“Nice” people will be the death of us all.

The summary is longer than the text and yet it chooses to show the summary. This is Apple Intelligence crossing a line from helpful to harmful. This is why people don’t want AI forced on them.

I think I could walk into any company trying to adopt AI, give a sack-lunch talk of one sentence, and then just crowd-surf for the rest of the hour:

“If, by a simple metric, the thing you’re trying to do doesn’t help, STOP DOING IT.”

(just kidding, they won’t stop doing it) https://mastodon.social/@stroughtonsmith/113466203439379313

@annika I think this is Wii cursor: https://wetdry.world/@primm/112190620266032893

And I don’t know what fedi post you’re looking for, but here’s the software article: https://www.characterworks.co/blog/nobody-wants-to-use-any-software

@annika Lovely meeting you this weekend! I should have said this in person, but thank you for all your work maintaining xoxo.zone. It’s really nice being here.

@thomasfuchs @andreagrandi @chris__martin If nothing else it very strongly communicates “I have no taste.” Far worse for credibility than not using an image at all.

@andreagrandi @thomasfuchs @chris__martin I owe no one gratitude for writing for free, nor does it change how I judge credibility. Use of generated images does. It says you don’t have the taste to see how garish and offputting those images are, or you think I don’t. If your grammar is terrible or you use a racial slur, I’ll also close the tab.

Do what you want in your web space. I don’t have to read it. If that matters to you, make better choices.

@annika A really fun detail about that is that on iOS, the App Store rules explicitly forbid paywalling built-in features like background audio and picture-in-picture. Many apps not made by Google have been rejected for trying to do the same thing. It’s baffling to me that Apple would give special advantages to its main competitor. What could they be protecting? We’ll probably never know.

@annika This happens naturally as the outer layers age and dry out, similar to garlic.

@inthehands “did not account for education attainment, or include the time of day the cognitive tests were conducted in the results” ayfkm

@schwa @inthehands It may just be a response to all the other big companies who launched AI products in recent weeks aggressively faceplanting on privacy and accuracy while Apple’s is the only one that seems to be sort of maybe trying not to do that.

@schwa @inthehands Investors probably care about avoiding a backlash like the one Microsoft is getting over Recall.

@ElleGray @inthehands I think people are mistaking this thoughtful suggestion for a prohibition.

@annika same energy

@anildash It sure seems like the general public would be a lot less accepting of tech products if they knew about the batshit ideology underpinning so many of them. Yet I’m not aware of this liability being disclosed anywhere.