Notices by Bela Lugosi's R⬜ (jimbob@aus.social)

I need to be very clear, that the push towards "vibe coding" - that is, deliberately deskilling people - is because AI code assistants are an (increasingly expensive) subscription service.

If you know how to code, you can just write Python, C, Java, R, PHP, whatever for free and make things. You may not own the tools of production, but at least you're not renting them.

If you have been deskilled so you only know how to vibe code, you will be paying for that privilege forever.

This also goes, by the way, for researchers who are starting to be convinced they don't need to learn how to be scientists anymore, because "the AI" can just do the science for them. Nope.

shipping John Mastodon with Fediverse Nicole

Absolutely taking the utter piss https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9vy191rgn1o

Sometimes the light in Tasmania is just *right*

Microsoft renaming their entire office app "Copilot" so my phone now says depraved things like "Would you like to open this PDF in Copilot?" is going to send me full The Joker

If *there is no longer any way to stay in touch with people if you leave Facebook* then that, alone, should be more than enough for anyone to realise what has been going on and establish alternatives. Same with X or anything else to be honest.

If someone online is really your friend/family/colleague, they will be happy to give you their phone number or email address if you ask. If they aren't happy to, then maybe they're just a rando after all.

My 82-year old Dad apropos of literally nothing; "Somebody's got to shoot Musk".

As a journal editor I've become aware that it is becoming a *thing* in the US for high school students to be recommended to *have already published a scientific paper* so it can be cited when applying for college.

This is insane.

I'm aware of, including some young people I personally know, of high-achieving high schoolers doing internships with scientists over a summer and writing a paper, and that's awesome.

But telling kids it's a requirement, that it's something they need to aim for or they are going to mess up getting into college? No way. Stop that.

@abstractcode @weirdestate this wasn't an architect's decision, this was the seller wondering "how can we advertise our 3 bedroom house as a 4 bedroom house?"

When you buy some multipack item from a supermarket and it says "Contains 11 packets!" and you just know a year ago it would have contained 12. MFs don't put prime numbers of items in things for the sheer hell of it.

Exciting news of a victory from the front line

Hmmmm. Wordpress is a painful, perpetually insecure behemoth that has long since lost its way from its original purpose, while Firefox is still, as least currently, *good*. The world is full of alternative CMSs. The world needs more browsers. https://hachyderm.io/@cam/113252252831641675

@troberts I tried Gemini AI this morning, results were not fantastic

@AlgoCompSynth Broken system!

Opposition to fascism united the disparate parties of the left, you say? Imagine if that worked elsewhere.

Tasmanians Dazzled by Super Rare Phenomenon: Three Consecutive Days of Mainland Media Attention

https://theshovel.com.au/2024/05/14/tasmanians-dazzled-by-rare-phenomena-mainland-media-attention

@geordie @GossiTheDog an update, of sorts, has just arrived

Right. It has happened. My institution now wants to develop teaching materials for a course by literally just running my papers through an LLM to "simplify" them. Have told the person requesting this my opinions on this idea.

Despite the moonlight, some #aurora action in Hobart

@radiofreefedi thanks for all you do, and as a composer of that long, annoying drone stuff, I think you're right and nobody needs the radio filled with that. It's actually inspiring me to write some snappier, more palatable works for my next album. Literally writing music so it will get played on RadioFreeFedi now 😬