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Generic white guy SysAdmin

@westbynoreaster.bsky.social

500 followers 140 following 2.2K posts

#HPC #SysAdmin & aspiring #DevOps headed to UNC-Charlotte in the new year. #dHTC evangelist, and labor history nerd. #BLM! Opinions my own. he/him

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · Nov 5

So I have taken an #HPC sysadmin job at #UNC Charlotte, starting around inauguration day. 😬 Please let the next two months go well. 🫣 oneit.charlotte.edu/urc/

University Research Computing – Office of OneIT

oneit.charlotte.edu

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The Oatmeal @theoatmeal.bsky.social · 20h

Let’s talk about AI art.

theoatmeal.com/comics/ai_art

A cartoonist's review of AI art - The Oatmeal

This is a comic about AI art.

theoatmeal.com

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your #3 source for absurdist true crime 🔨 @davidgerard.co.uk · 13h

> LLMs and generative models are not “progress”. They’re products and we ban those all the time.

www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/they-ba...

by @baldurbjarnason.com

'They ban products, don't they?'

Web dev at the end of the world, from Hveragerði, Iceland

www.baldurbjarnason.com

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 11h

I don't have the writing chops for this but damn, submitting a #ConsideredHarmful style essay on LLMs to an #ACM meeting would be class! ✊🏻🤌🏻
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conside...

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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.bsky.social · 14h

They gave the physics prize to the dude who said that ChatGPT is the world's butterfly and GPT3 was a caterpillar.

The dude who told us in 2018 that radiologists should cease to go to school because the profession was gonna be out in 5 years. But 5 years later he just moved on to the next lie.

These Women Tried to Warn Us About AI

Rumman Chowdhury, Timnit Gebru, Safiya Noble, Seeta Peña Gangadharan, and Joy Buolamwini open up about their artificial intelligence fears

www.rollingstone.com

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 13h

What was it about the business incentives about late 2000s securities ratings agencies that caused serious problems? 🤔 @mattseybold.bsky.social

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 13h

NVIDIA and OpenAi:

Concerns that their “increasingly complex and interconnected web of business transactions is artificially propping up the trillion-dollar AI boom.“

@bloomberg.com $NVDA 👀
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.bsky.social · 18h

The audacity to anthropomorphize machines being built by corporations
--stealing data
--exploiting the labor of the people who are actually the "undesirables" under eugenic thought
--killing the environment,

and then compare criticisms of such eugenic practices to, wait for it, eugenics.

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The Onion @theonion.com · 16h

Health Experts Recommend Standing Up At Desk, Leaving Office, Never Coming Back https://theonion.com/health-experts-recommend-standing-up-at-desk-leaving-o-1819577456/

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 15h

I can imagine @davehitchcock.bsky.social shouting "NOT LIKE THAT" at the tele today. ✊🏻 Solidarity to my former colleagues across the ocean.

Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 16h

I have not. How so? This is not a questioning it's utter ubiquity, but cannot immediately see it as a load bearing component. What might I be missing?

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Clare Fieseler, PhD @fieseler.bsky.social · 20h

Not sure people realize how INSANELY DRAINING data centers will be on our planet.

If you imagine data centers as their own country, they'll rank fourth in global electricity use by 2035 — outranked only by China, India, and the U.S.

Read this in @bloomberg.com👇

www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring

Wholesale electricity costs as much as 267% more than it did five years ago in areas near data centers. That’s being passed on to customers.

www.bloomberg.com

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 19h

But shouldn't a stock's valuation change be lagging the reporting about corporate earning and margins? Clearly I understand nothing about how these things are evaluated.

Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 19h

#WilhoitsLaw remains as solid as ever in both the present and the historical record.

Kathryn @skajolly.bsky.social · 1d

Mother Jones has an interesting piece on how the Nazis did this.

www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

The “dual state” theory was invented to describe Nazis. The Supreme Court could take us there.

Authoritarianism—but make it look like the rule of law.

www.motherjones.com

Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 19h

How is 14% gross (annual?) margin, razor thin? Especially in light that most employees are at best to see an inflation neutral adjustment to their annual salary each year.

Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 20h

I want a copy of this for academic union meetings. Like the municipal bus driver from "The Simpsons" tapping the sign.

Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 20h

The most violent two-page chapter in academic history.

Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 1d

Rhetorical question?
Also, can't help but be curious which of M$oft many bin-fire products prompted this.

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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 1d

Did not expect this exhibit of:

“Ultimately, contemporary AI is research misconduct”

For more: bsky.app/profile/oliv...

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 1d

Oh FFS. Because what overburdened peer review systems really need is more noise between the reviewers & ACs. Yeah, that's the ticket.

aaai.org/aaai-launche...

>>

Screenshot of AAAI automated review announcement reading:

1. Supplementary First-Stage Reviews: LLM-generated reviews will be included as one component of the
initial review stage, providing an additional perspective alongside traditional human expert evaluations.
2. Discussion Summary Assistance: LLMs will assist the Senior Program Committee (SPC) members by
summarizing reviewer discussions, helping to highlight key points of consensus and disagreement among
human reviewers.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 1d

Some just don't care.

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Ivan the K ™☑️ @ivanthek.bsky.social · 1d

"Well, that's the perverse thing. All of this frenzied investment in AI is driven by people who seem unaware that much of the eco-system will be quickly commoditized, whether it's large language models, hyperscaler services or the underlying hardware, like CPUs and GPUs."

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 1d

This is why you make sure there’s a girl in every group during breakout.

"IF YOU OFFLOAD YOUR CREATIVE & CRITICAL CAPACITIES IN EXCHANGE FOR CONVENIENCE,
THE ONLY THING
YOU'LL HAVE LEFT TO OFFER THE PREVAILING SOCIAL
ORDER IS YOUR OBEDIENCE!"

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Brett "Solidarity 2025" Banditelli @banditelli.org · 2d

I demand a union representative.

CNBC @cnbc.com · 2d

To shut down rude behavior instantly, try a simple yet powerful five-word response.

Use this 5-word phrase when someone is rude to you—it's like 'holding up a mirror,' says public speaking expert

When we encounter a rude person, our first instinct might be to fire back with a snarky comment. But that's not the right move, says public speaking expert John Bowe. Here's the perfect response to instantly shut down rude behavior.

cnb.cx

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 2d

If folks are looking for the original Dec. '24 report in PDF form: www.surf.nl/files/2024-1...

www.surf.nl

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 2d

If folks are looking for the original Dec. '24 report in PDF form: www.surf.nl/files/2024-1...

www.surf.nl

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 2d

Still trying to learn this, well more accurately relearn this again and again. For many men, this may be extra hard, as they have few contacts outside of work.

Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 2d

A well worn path through American Universities by commercial software companies, #Mathworks & #StataCorp being the first two that come to my mind. What others can y'all think of?

Richard D. Morey @richarddmorey.bsky.social · 4d

Also - contrast b/w the response when I advocate teaching R instead of SPSS -- "No hurry, let's not rush into it" (still waiting) -- & others re: use of LLMs -- "It's inevitable, we're behind; need it implement it ASAP!" -- is telling. Learning to code is freeing. Overhyped LLMs create dependency.

Excerpt from Guest & van Rooij, 2025:

As Danielle Navarro (2015) says about shortcuts through us-
ing inappropriate technology, which chatbots are, we end up dig-
ging ourselves into “a very deep hole.” She goes on to explain:

"The business model here is to suck you in during
your student days, and then leave you dependent on
their tools when you go out into the real world. [...]
And you can avoid it: if you make use of packages
like R that are open source and free, you never get
trapped having to pay exorbitant licensing fees." (pp.
37–38)

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Randy Fair @southerngayteacher.bsky.social · 3d

“as unions scrambled this year to put out a series of fires in the form of attacks against Social Security, immigrants, and labor rights, their members’ retirement dollars were helping to enrich the same man fanning the flames.”

inthesetimes.com/article/fina...

Financing Our Own Destruction

How workers’ pensions fuel attacks on the working class—and how to reclaim them for the common good.

inthesetimes.com

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