113 lines
8 KiB
YAML
113 lines
8 KiB
YAML
- url: https://xeiaso.net/shitposts/no-way-to-prevent-this/CVE-2024-1086/
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name: "\"No way to prevent this\" say users of only language where this regularly happens"
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summary: |
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> In the hours following the release of CVE-2024-1086 for the project The Linux kernel, site reliability workers and systems administrators scrambled to desperately rebuild and patch all their systems to fix a vulnerability that allows an attacker with unprivileged command execution to gain read/write access to page tables. This is due to the affected components being written in C, the only programming language where these vulnerabilities regularly happen. "This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there's nothing anyone can do to stop them," said programmer King Bud Hodkiewicz, echoing statements expressed by hundreds of thousands of programmers who use the only language where 90% of the world's memory safety vulnerabilities have occurred in the last 50 years, and whose projects are 20 times more likely to have security vulnerabilities.
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- url:https://amycastor.com/2023/09/12/pivot-to-ai-pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain/
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name: "Pivot to AI: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain -- by Amy Castor and David Gerard"
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summary: |
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> The magical claim of machine learning is that if you give the computer data, the computer will work out the relations in the data all by itself. Amazing!
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>
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> In practice, everything in machine learning is incredibly hand-tweaked. Before AI can find patterns in data, all that data has to be tagged, and output that might embarrass the company needs to be filtered.
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>
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> ...
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>
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> Commercial AI runs on underpaid workers in English-speaking countries in Africa creating new training data and better responses to queries. It’s a painstaking and laborious process that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough.
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>
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> AI doesn’t remove human effort. It just makes it much more alienated.
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- url: https://allpoetry.com/poem/14374597-The-Homework-Machine-by-Shel-Silverstein
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name: "Shel Silverstein: The Homework Machine"
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summary: |
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It appears that Shel Silverstein predicted ChatGPT all the way back in 1981.
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- url: https://fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/
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name: "Jason Velazquez: Any Technology Indistinguishable From Magic is Hiding Something"
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summary: |
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> I can’t stress this point enough. The reason why GAMM and all its little digirati minions on
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social media are pushing things like crypto, then the blockchain, and now virtual reality and
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artificial intelligence is because those technologies require a metric fuckton of computing
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power to operate. That fact may be devastating for the earth, indeed it is for our mental health,
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but it’s wonderful news for the four storefronts selling all the juice.
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- url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpei_Yokoi#Lateral_Thinking_with_Withered_Technology
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name: "Concept: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology"
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summary: |
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> [Gunpei Yokoi, long-time Nintendo designer and producter,] said "The Nintendo
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way of adapting technology is not to look for the state of the art but to utilize
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mature technology that can be mass-produced cheaply." He articulated his
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philosophy of "Lateral Thinking of Withered Technology" (枯れた技術の水平思考,
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"Kareta Gijutsu no Suihei Shikō") (also translated as "Lateral Thinking with
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Seasoned Technology"), in the book Yokoi Gunpei Game House. "Withered technology"
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in this context refers to a mature technology which is cheap and well understood.
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"Lateral thinking" refers to finding radical new ways of using such technology.
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Yokoi held that toys and games do not necessarily require cutting-edge technology;
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novel and fun gameplay are more important. In the interview, he suggested that
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expensive cutting-edge technology can get in the way of developing a new product.
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ht [Simon Willison](https://simonwillison.net/2024/Mar/14/lateral-thinking-with-weathered-technology/).
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- url: https://coryd.dev/posts/2024/look-for-longevity/
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name: "Cory Dransfeldt: Look for longevity"
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summary: |
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> Everyone has a list of products they've seen fail and disappear or get acquired
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and disappear. I want a less-ambitious, lower-scale, bootstrapped company with a
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plan. I love solo founders with low costs and a fair subscription price.
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_Yep_. What deranged times we live in that it is routine not only for businesses
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to launch with no plan for ever generating a sustainable income, but for those
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businesses to rake in buckets and buckets of investment.
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- url: https://chaos.guru/essays/2024/hostile-environments/
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name: "Luka Kladaric: Shipping quality software in hostile environments"
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summary: |
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A harrowing tale of fixing an unsustainable software project. I've been there.
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After being there, I agree with one of Luka's takeaways-- you cannot wait for
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permission to fix maintainability problems in software. You have do it. And if you
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have to do it quietly and subvert "the process" to make it happen, do it anyway.
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- url: https://pando.beehiiv.com/p/javascript-was-slowing-me-down-all-in-on-elixir
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name: "Roberto Pando: Javascript was slowing me down. All in on Elixir"
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summary: |
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I love to hear these kind of stories about adopting Elixir. I went through a similar
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arc when I moved from Python/Django, to Node, to Ruby/Rails, and finally to Phoenix/Elixir.
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- url: https://darthmall.net/weblog/2023/rss/
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name: "Evan Sheehan: RSS?"
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summary: |
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There's a swing back to RSS right now, which I think is good. But I also think that Evan's
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thoughts here are good. RSS can't be the only solution for how we take in the web. It can't
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be the only solution for how we decentralize the web again.
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Hat tip to [Greg Morris](https://gregmorris.co.uk/2024/01/29/visit-more-blogs) for his related
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post that helped me find this one.
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- url: https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/generative/
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name: "Ethan Marcotte: Generative"
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summary: >
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A collection of quotes about AI from 1683 to 2024.
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- url: https://seldo.com/posts/ai-ml-llms-and-the-future-of-software
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name: "Laurie Voss: On AI, ML, LLMs and the future of software"
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summary: >
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A level-headed explanation of what exactly AI, ML, and LLMs are. "LLMs are really complex markov
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chains; but the really complex part makes them qualitatively different" has been by go-to
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explanation of LLMs. I disagree, however, with the idea that LLMs "understand" anything. LLMs
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contain big statistical models of sentence and paragraph structure, and of the relationship
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between words and phrases. This allows them to generate text that is more of a statistical match
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for text written by humans. That humans see this as "understanding" is a form of pareidolia.
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This distinction is narrow, but important.
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- url: https://coryd.dev/posts/2024/towards-a-quieter-friendlier-web/
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name: "Cory Dransfeldt: Towards a quieter, friendlier web"
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summary: >
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A series of great principles for a better web! Hear, hear!
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Side note: thanks to Cory for inspiring me to add a link log feed to this site,
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inspired by his at coryd.dev.
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- url: https://www.abstractmachines.dev/posts/am013-easy-to-write-code-considered-harmful/
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name: "Leandro Ostera: AM013 – Easy-to-Write Code Considered Harmful"
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summary: >
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Leandro argues that the key to writing readable code is taking implicit context
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and making it explicit. I agree!
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This is also one reason I love Elixir. Many of the design choices in the language
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and standard library encourage you to explicitly write what you mean-- even if it
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is more keystrokes.
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- url: https://soatok.blog/2024/02/27/the-tech-industry-doesnt-understand-consent/
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name: "Soatok: The Tech Industry Doesn't Understand Consent"
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summary: >
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A brilliant lens for thinking about our relationship with tech products, design,
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and terms of use. Opt-out "consent" isn't consent at all. "Maybe Later" isn't
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consent either.
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