Posts by hzulla@infosec.exchange
(DIR) Post #AseBClK1UZBCniZkoa by hzulla@infosec.exchange
2025-04-01T12:30:11Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@john Debian with Gnome, all desktop applications via flatpak.
(DIR) Post #Atb4r6pdGC1Z3KMu2q by hzulla@infosec.exchange
2025-04-29T10:07:55Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
Listen, capitalism, what I really want right now is a reliable product label telling me that there's no generative AI content in a product.You can already sell me stuff by loudly telling buyers with a label that it's without gluten, micro plastics or palm oil.Go ahead, I beg you, label things that are free of AI pollution.
(DIR) Post #Au8SVTju2U5SiiDkC8 by hzulla@infosec.exchange
2025-05-14T19:34:12Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
The cool thing about writing code is that the computer is doing exactly what you tell it to do.The cool thing about debugging code is slowly learning what you actually told the computer to do.
(DIR) Post #AuDXXF0B9GH5nh5vvc by hzulla@infosec.exchange
2025-05-17T07:19:52Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@ttuegel @tante Also, employees of companies selling AI products (such as Microsoft) have an obvious incentive to lie to their CEO about the percentage of AI-generated code they use in development.
(DIR) Post #Av2BVnXJcF4OIx1hj6 by hzulla@infosec.exchange
2025-06-11T17:03:40Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
When they named their company Hugging Face AI, this was what they want people to think of vs. this is what I can't help to think of every time it's mentioned.
(DIR) Post #Av2BVsxNSlt77EG5Xk by hzulla@infosec.exchange
2025-06-11T17:06:20Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Can't beat Giger at visual branding.
(DIR) Post #AvDHUGjwnpY8lN9GEK by hzulla@infosec.exchange
2025-06-17T04:54:30Z
0 likes, 2 repeats
27 years ago, a professional political speechwriter and ghostwriter contacted me about a silly Markov chain text generator I had coded.The text generator had been fed with the party platforms of the German federal election of 1998. It was a silly PR stunt by a political news website at the time. It was obviously meant as a joke.https://www.politik-digital.de/projektuebersicht/phrasendrescher/But the speechwriter was absolutely sure that this will be a worthwhile tool to help him write for his clients.I think about this guy a lot today.
(DIR) Post #AvDHUI9rWxsDA2HTGK by hzulla@infosec.exchange
2025-06-17T05:03:49Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
A Markov chain text generator is the great grandfather of today's generative AI. It's the dumbest form of machine learning you could imagine. But modern LLMs are basically still run on similar ideas at their core:You feed a good amount of text to the machine, it learns about its statistical characteristics without understanding the content. And then the machine is capable to create new text with similar characteristics. It is why us programmers make fun of LLMs as a "stochastic parrot".The Markov chain "virtual politician" for the 1998 German federal election was based on an article by Brian Hayes written in 1983. The algorithm is so simple, I read about this and then wrote my first Markov chain text generator in high school.
(DIR) Post #AvDHUNRlroAZZ1hLN2 by hzulla@infosec.exchange
2025-06-17T05:07:16Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
The 1998 "virtual politician" wasn't more than a party trick. It would write nonsense that barely sounded like a human author.(The 1983 article its code was based on used Shakespeare as input and was headlined "A progress report on the fine art of turning literature into drivel" for a reason.)We even added a long explanation of Markov chains on the website. This was high school mathematics!Yet we got responses from the audience by people who considered this an artificial intelligence.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/computer-recreations-1983-11/
(DIR) Post #AvDHUSGFy2viUlLicK by hzulla@infosec.exchange
2025-06-17T05:09:26Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Artificial intelligence is only in the mind of the machine's observer.
(DIR) Post #AvDHUXlzTUHjadEdH6 by hzulla@infosec.exchange
2025-06-17T06:33:37Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Afterthought: Reading Brian Hayes and Martin Gardner during high school taught me more about programming and algorithms than any of my professors at University.
(DIR) Post #AvTWLIwqT8KQDgXvRQ by hzulla@infosec.exchange
2025-06-24T23:10:42Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
Oh ffs, guess I'm done with Spotify.While on the family plan subscription and with no prior interest seeding, #Spotify is currently recommending a German-language far-right white nationalist podcast to my kid, who just came to me to complain about it.So seriously, what's a good, non-enshittified alternative to Spotify these days? Recommendations needed, what do you use instead of Spotify and why?(Thanks for retoots.)
(DIR) Post #AwjMyhT7LYFG3JwUGe by hzulla@infosec.exchange
2025-07-30T19:58:18Z
1 likes, 3 repeats
This is the playbook we will see increasingly in the future, thanks to generative AI.1. Buy rights to an established high quality old media content brand that recently went broke, such as a popular science magazine or a local news outlet2. Take over the website, which comes with instant SEO gold since it already has lots of highly ranked backlinks to the brand's high quality archive3. Fire previous staff, reducing operating cost to a minimum 4. Pump a regular flow of AI slop into the CMS as "new" content instead of hiring human authors5. Distribute your new slop through the brand's established social media accounts and (of course) news aggregators like Google News, where the brand was highly ranked as a trustful news source 10+ years ago under old management6. Add Ads! Mix sloppy politically slated rage bait into the output stream!7. Profit!This can be implemented at minimal cost with a cheap skeleton crew, blasting slop into our media ecosystem at scale.Generative AI is a denial of service attack on the human recipient's bullshit filter, and flooding the zone will always win against your brain's defenses.https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/07/30/csiro-posts-ai-fake-climate-article-with-made-up-quotes//cc @davidgerard
(DIR) Post #AwjMymoZTDNQdJ1Btw by hzulla@infosec.exchange
2025-07-30T20:13:47Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@davidgerard Back in the day, you had to actually *pay* bad writers to fill a content mill with seemingly plausible nonsense to get ranked by Google.People wrote fake answers for fake questions in fake articles on SEO link farms. Being a content mill writer was a job!Now all you need for an endless slop machine with ads and/or some added malign disinfo is a CMS and an LLM.
(DIR) Post #Az9zXNiEgM6SWvRppY by hzulla@infosec.exchange
2025-10-12T20:23:54Z
0 likes, 2 repeats
Some things learned after handling a few #endof10 devices:- Yes, today's computers have become so much faster. Those old machines I'm refurbishing are, in fact, damn slow.- "Damn slow" is still fast enough to handle e-mail, use a browser for a typical news site or use productivity software such as LibreOffice.- It's a crying shame that Microsoft is degrading so many fine devices to e-waste that can easily be used with Linux.- "Damn slow" is way too slow for Youtube and online TV streaming. Who would've expected that ubiquitous online video and the lack of hardware support for modern codecs is _actually_ what drives obsolescence?- Linux Mint Debian Edition runs on pretty much _anything_ that can do amd64 with minimal amounts of RAM and yet it's _fast_.- Imho, LMDE6 isn't as welcoming to beginners as it could be. The default desktop theme looks very much like a Nerd toy and every new installation wants you to run a number of first-time-setup procedures that are puzzling and intimidating for someone who isn't into computing and just wants to use this machine.- I really miss Ubuntu's oemsetup option for Debian and LMDE. I'd prefer not to setup a default user for the devices we give away and would want the recipients to setup things as they prefer on their own.- When even LMDE is too slow, Chrome OS Flex is still fast enough on even lower-end devices. It's not FOSS, but for those who use Android on their phone, it's an easy way to rescue a donated laptop from the trash and put it to good use for a few more years.
(DIR) Post #B24KcmGF1bf90iOQBk by hzulla@infosec.exchange
2025-12-06T15:23:44Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
Absolutely stoked to watch how the lying machine technology that promises CEOs the end of junior careers is now destroying affordable home computing. The IT industry is absolutely on the right track towards building a better future, yes.
(DIR) Post #B24L0Nr1Q7NAGRqx8K by hzulla@infosec.exchange
2026-01-04T08:31:15Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
Late 1960s: Let's build a decentralised computer network that can withstand a nuclear blast.Mid 2020s: Accidentally deploying a single broken line in a config file will take down a third of the world's economy. Also, the president of a far away country can make your computers unusable at will.
(DIR) Post #B24L4qbgScgyb5o7BQ by hzulla@infosec.exchange
2025-12-31T20:37:04Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@0xabad1dea I unironically considered actually buying this yard sign to celebrate my current special interest.
(DIR) Post #B2CgotssGDEqNtKPuS by hzulla@infosec.exchange
2026-01-12T07:35:09Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
It's a major scandal for our industry that decades in, there is no general purpose bootloader and OS install method for non-x86 devices.I have these perfectly fine ARM-based Android tablets lying in my tech stuff drawer and there is no way to keep them useful few years after the manufacturer unilaterally decided to EOL them, while I can put Linux onto any 15 yr old laptop and keep using it (granted, as long as it has a 64 bit x86-CPU).
(DIR) Post #B2edb5EbqHCl9NBly4 by hzulla@infosec.exchange
2026-01-19T18:12:12Z
4 likes, 2 repeats
It's curious how "building a fast, standards compliant, open source web browser" isn't an option here.https://mozillafoundation.tfaforms.net/201#mozilla #aislop