Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 14h

Even if it wasn't a shock collar, the rest of the behavior on display there falls into "not a great way to treat a dog," IMO.

And of course people have turned excusing it all into a weird hill to die on, because the internet.

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jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 1d

LLMs do well with bounded tasks with clearly definable, limited context requirements.

I'm pretty strongly of the opinion that legal practice doesn't fall within that criteria, especially in a common law system.

It'll find a place as a tool used by lawyers, but it won't replace them.

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Reposted

GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com · 1d

for real, though, i think the ridiculous inflatable costumes are a major flaw in the armor that can be heavily exploited, portland protestors are leaning all the way into our reputation and making heroes out of inflatable frogs and villains out of the security forces

GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com · 1d

FROGS TOGETHER STRONG is fucking incredible

The Oregonian @oregonian.com · 1d

Things are happening at Portland's ICE facility tonight.

Read more of our protest coverage here: www.oregonlive.com/crime/2025/1...

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jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 1d

Stealth pistols was like *the* character build for that game. Massively OP for most of the game.

But the game would also happily let you create builds that were borderline unplayable. That and the crazy difficulty spikes around bosses are a lot of why it has the (earned) reputation it does.

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jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 1d

It's a completely broken and unbalanced trainwreck of a game mechanically, but Obsidian was really cooking with the narrative elements of it. It's still got a really special place in my heart because of it.

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jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 1d

A friend and I played it at the same time, and I don't think I'll ever forget talking about playing it and slowly realizing we were getting very different plots because we'd chosen to take the major missions in a different order

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jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 1d

It's an absolute mess of a game, but Alpha Protocol is still one of the most ambitious games I've ever seen in terms of choice and impact.

You'll hit major story beats no matter what, but even seemingly little things like the order you choose to do missions impact what characters live and die.

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jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 1d

I'm not sure I've ever rushed to install a software package faster in my life.

We're going to ignore the fact that I typically have vim installed on Windows boxes anyway these days. Doesn't matter. This rules.

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jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 1d

Vendors in the infosec space are absolutely insane.

Got a ping that somebody from a random vendor is in the lobby of the corporate office -- that I don't work at -- saying they have an appointment with me.

Welcome to permablacklist status. lol

Reposted

Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 2d

New: Apple banned an app that simply archived videos of ICE abuses. Rather than other apps that record ICE official's real-time location, Eyes Up is to "preserve evidence until it can be used in court." Videos from TikTok etc. Every submission manually reviewed

www.404media.co/apple-banned...

Apple Banned an App That Simply Archived Videos of ICE Abuses

Eyes Up's purpose is to "preserve evidence until it can be used in court." But it has been swept up in Apple's crackdown on ICE-spotting apps.

www.404media.co

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jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 2d

And I don't live in the sticks -- I'm in a midsize metro an hour from Atlanta!

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jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 2d

It was probably made easier because I'm in an area where Amazon never really recovered from covid and Prime was a complete lie -- 95% of Prime items were 5+ days shipping.

I was already considering cancelling and cutting back, then Bezos decided to Bezos and I went to extra mile to take it to $0.

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jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 2d

(TBC, no moral judgment of you here. Just backing you up on that point. Sometimes you've gotta do what you've gotta do).

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jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 2d

I dropped my Amazon to $0 this time last year. it's been both generally easier than I expected and eye-opening on the point re: items not carried elsewhere.

It's been surprising and frustrating how many companies use Amazon as their *only* distribution channel. Have done a lot of doing without.

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jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 3d

Tangentially, I have to know: what weird Hapsbergian fate has become of Martin Marietta in DVTL?

jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 3d

Walz does all the time. And it works for him because it's "damn" and "hell" and he'll sneak in the occasional "horseshit."

He sounds like that one high school coach most people had at one point because he literally is!

But it only works because that's who he is anyway.

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jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 3d

I think this is most obvious with guys like Swalwell.

He strikes me as generally genuine and he even gets a lot of the messaging right, but the guy is just such a poor natural actor that it's noticeably forced.

Swalwell doing it feels a hundred times more natural than Schumer and it's still bad!

jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 3d

When I was a kid (along with a lot of this site), WW2 vets were about the age Vietnam vets are now.

Also, Walter in The Big Lebowski is roughly as far removed from Nam as GWOT veterans are from Iraq and Afghanistan today.

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jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 3d

Instead of seeing clear capabilities and limitations, people tend to use it in wildly inappropriate ways because the interface makes it unclear where those boundaries are.

jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 3d

I've long thought that chat being the primary interface leads to a lot of obfuscation of capability.

It encourages anthropomorphizing causing an expectation that they behave like a human and blurs the line of what it's actually doing.

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jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 3d

Personally, I think OAI collapsing is highly likely between sama's ponziesque approach to funding and, as you noted, having given away the farm/IP to MS already.

But, like, Anthropic exists at a fraction of the scale and probably has better tech anyway?

Spending will shift, but still be there.

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jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 4d

My inclination, given past historical performance, is that sama committed to targets he's never going to hit and just got fleeced again.

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 4d

".. OpenAI will receive warrants for up to 160 million AMD shares, roughly 10% of the chip company, at 1 cent per share, awarded in phases, if OpenAI hits certain milestones .."

@wsj.com $AMD
www.wsj.com/tech/ai/open...

OpenAI, AMD Announce Massive Computing Deal, Marking New Phase of AI Boom

Five-year agreement will challenge Nvidia’s market dominance, as OpenAI plans deployment of AMD’s new MI450 chips.

www.wsj.com

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jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 5d

The context window awareness 4.5 has built in is so good. Just now:

"Since this is taking too long and we're past the token budget warning, let me give you a summary of what we've accomplished and what needs to be fixed"

Read: let's pause and take stock before I go off the rails here.

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jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 6d

Another way of putting it is that if you rely on Fox reporting of a specific story, you're likely to get accurate facts.

If you rely on Fox *coverage* of a situation, you're more likely to end up with an entirely skewed perspective of what happened.

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jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 6d

This honestly isn't entirely dissimilar from the non-opinion side of Fox.

Their actual hard news reporting has historically been quite good, especially the web/print side. It's story filtering where they get you.

Then they drown it all in constant distorting opinion coverage.

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