Aotearoa, recently ex-IT. Some kind of socialist/anarchist, focused on climate response. ADHD, pakeha, he/they/she 🏳️⚧️, fash can DIAF.
2,082 followers 844 following 2,837 posts
view profile on Bluesky 
There is a kind of... convergence? Projection? In how the only humans LLMs really resemble are the ones pushing LLMs ChatGPT will agree with anything, regardless of whether it's true or false or make sense, bc that is how it works. Altman is the same way. Internal consistency not required
A decent, factual summary of the MSD/WINZ experience: newsroom.co.nz/2023/08/18/s...
My favourite AI story remains the Reddit user who was very impressed that AI let him generate 40,000 lines of code for a new SaaS product, but does anyone know of any websites where he could hire a coder to make it work?
Hey you know when I pointed out that there are a lot of toxic online spaces where vulnerable people mix with evil people and some of those vulnerable people are largely being groomed and exploited by the evil people, but everyone outside those online spaces assumes they're the same group?
These sorts of articles don't quite seem to understand that this is the point. Everyone knows GenAI doesn't *work* - as in, it can't actually do even what is claimed it can do - but the point is to hurt labour. www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...
Do you have to pay a "retoucher" the same as an illustrator? Do you have to pay a "recoder" the same as a developer? The point is to invent "new" jobs without the prestige or protection of existing jobs.
I don't get how people don't realize that a technology that replaces junior and entry level positions in a field destroys that field. There's no skipping steps. You have to be a junior before you can be a senior, and if you don't have senior people, you don't have a field.
Adequate housing is part of the right to an adequate standard of living in article 25 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in article 11.1 of the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. www.ohchr.org/en/special-p... tikatangata.org.nz/human-rights...
Also, when the going gets tough for private healthcare, they shunt the patient back to Public, saying: "Now you have to look after them cos we don't have the skills/resources." Privatise the profit, socialise the cost. #nzpol #HealthCare #Privatize/Socialise
Emad has been working so hard to help his family in Gaza (as well as helping me help many other families) and he was so tired he couldn’t think of what to write. If you can help him please do ❤️
If you can and you're willing, please stand with 36,000 healthcare workers as they strike tomorrow and Thursday at locations ALL AROUND Aotearoa. Locations below, including outside Fundy Luxes office and Simians office. maranga-mai.nzno.org.nz/te_whatu_ora...
📢 Health NZ initially said it needed more time to collate the data, but after four months declined the data request entirely.
It's interesting how defensive (mostly enthusiastic democrat) Americans get when you point out that their country voted in huge numbers for exactly what they are getting. The pitch was racism, misogyny and pain for 'the libs' and that's what they're delivering. Nobody was tricked.
Lol at Substack locking in, what I'm learning this week is that eventually every pragmatic compromise comes to bite you in the arse sooner or later. I regret so many of mine, at least I'm not on Substack anymore.
Get the hell off Substack before you literally can’t anymore without blowing up your business
That’s an insultingly pathetic offer. Pay equity claims have been dismissed so there’s no path to a more reasonable pay scale, and now they’re being offered three years of effective pay cuts because inflation will significantly outstrip the rises. #nzpol
NZEI members considering industrial action. Too right we are. When school support staff are only being offered a $1 raise over THREE YEARS - 60c year one, 15c year two & 25c year three - and teachers, principals & MOE staff are offered 1%, I say 🖕🖕🖕. share.google/11NDtb6pnFnK...
NZ’s shift to more private healthcare will likely raise costs and reduce quality: what the evidence tells us theconversation.com/nzs-shift-to...
‘The New Camden’ Painting by Jennifer Elizabeth Brown 1976. Oil on board. Measurements 55 x 55 cm.
Jo Cox was murdered by a man with a house full of neo-Nazi agitprop and this was then retconned into a vague narrative about social media abuse
I don’t know why this makes me so mad. I guess it’s just that this is one of the most loathsome ways I’ve seen a whole sector of NGOs immediately and ruthlessly abandon its constituency — and I’m trans, so it’s not my first time around this particular track
Why aren't these losers fearing for their lives and physical safety? www.news.com.au/national/neo... (I know why but it warrants the rhetorical question)
We collectively put up with Nazis for a weirdly long time.
I do not see how an event like the March for Australia could possibly have done more antisemitic shit than it did without turning into a fundamentally different and even darker kind of event. Yet the nominally Jewish safety oriented NGOs in this country don’t seem to have noticed it happened
Sometimes we’re unsatisfied with a thing we made because when it only existed in our head, we saw all the things it could have been and when it’s done we know all the things that it isn’t, but we can’t see the way it expands into a million new things when someone else unpacks it in their head. 🖊️🦑
Get your covid booster and flu vaccine if eligible and wear a mask, because levels are higher that even 2022 for this time of year.
Hey Wellington. If you have a bit of land that gets sun and rain and a bit of wind shelter then.... Plant greens like lettuce and silverbeet. And some greens like coriander and parsley. They'll be good for you and they'll grow well and you won't need to go to that awful supermarket so much
The only virulently atheist people I have time for are ex-church folk cos they come by it honestly.
I don't see it from people who are doing much to take out fascists, though, to me it's more of a liberal "our side, their side" game playing.
Australia's Nazi leadership are most likely feds, but then that's not particularly reassuring given that Adolf Hitler was also a fed
Chatbots killing their users suggests that big tech has transitioned from simple parasite to parasitoid, indicating that keeping the host alive is no longer essential for their evolutionary strategy
I just kind-of find silly/"clever" names for politicians annoying. It's such basic wit.
please mask, if you purport to care about other people at all, this is such an simple way to exhibit community care. maskbloc.org
This is my new favourite chart. Austerity meets reality. The illusion of choice crashing on the rocks of broken dogma. The vassal state collapsing in on itself as it's prime source of wealth (private debt expansion via the housing ponzi) stalls.
But hey at least the Allies got to say the right thing while also depicting zero material pushback on the violence of deadnaming.
The functional result is that all we really get of Wanda is her death. So 90% of Wanda's story is now bury your gays. Cool cool cool greaaaat
Look at how they butchered my girl! No games of you for you! *Points at Wanda in Netflix' Sandman adaption* Le sigh.
Don't like what Sandman has done to Wanda. Replacing a different character and therefore undermining the whole arc, kind of makes the funeral stuff overbaked.
rotating objects is an awesome way to see what items look like from all different types of directions - without the troublesome walking that would usually be a part of that process. rotation is integral in every industry from logistics to fiction, where authors "turn" ideas around in their minds
Solar panels are basically wireless receivers for a nuclear fusion power plant.
I’m sharing a Palestinian account every day and today is Saleh. Before this he was a taxi driver but he also was being treated for a severe back injury. He’s been unable to continue this treatment and is trying to take care of his family including Hamdi, 10, Enaya, 9, Laila, 6, Elham, 5 and Ahmed, 1
Sand batteries in Finland, China's massive investments in solar power, there are lots of good efforts taking place.
Good lord, people! We can have sand batteries? We have so many real solutions…
Neil Young quits Facebook and Instagram over Meta's use of chatbots with children 'Meta's use of chatbots with children is unconscionable,' Young's team shared in a statement. www.cbc.ca/music/neil-y...
On the other hand, the UK is more beholden to Europe's laws and court decisions -- shoutout to @tupped.bsky.social for digging into that here www.thegist.ie/the-gist-tra...
Good evening friends... #photography
Friends, LinkedIn has failed me 😑 but I know the politically engaged community I follow here won’t. I'm chairing the Karangahape Candidates debate at Double Whammy on Tues ahead of the local gvt elections - and I’d like your input. What's got you rarked up about Auckland? Questions please 🙏
Even when we own things we still act as if we are renting them, slaves to market resale that demands we white our cars and beige our houses rather than fully occupy them. We live in rented lives.
Fail2ban isn't good enough because the botnets are spread over hundreds of thousands of IPs. Anubis forces the browser to solve a cryptographic puzzle and if successful forwards to the website. It's been very successful for us anubis.techaro.lol
Good morning~☀️🫠今日のらくがきで〜す
This is the most prominent case of a trans refugee from the UK www.theguardian.com/world/2017/o...
Do you mean that we have already accepted refugees under those conditions? Am I showing my arse by asking?
A car-nerd friend is working on a short visual aid on how to identify unmarked ICE vehicles. She's hoping to find some volunteers who can translate it into other languages... Especially: -Kiche -Mandarin -Vietnamese -Yoruba -Igbo -Arabic -Hindi She has Spanish covered already.
The rest of us can have little a vengeance, as a treat.
I'm writing a self-help book about how the proper use of semaglutide and tirzepatide can lead to overwhelming happinesses, not just due to physical wellbeing but also in one's emotional and artistic lives. I'm calling it THE AGONISTS AND THE ECSTASIES.
I've always loved his approach of throwing the reader in the deep end with how the world is, even while the story telling is usually straightforward.
When does Aotearoa start accepting trans refugees from the UK and US?
I considered writing a long carefully constructed argument laying out the harms and limitations of AI, but instead I wrote about being a hater. Only humans can be haters.
hilariously it seems i've been picked up by some ai content mills. i guess they're chiming in to underscore how this technology just spits out watered down versions of human work
so i'm reading the NX hack security advisory. as far as i can tell, NX vibe-coded the fucking security hole? It's a build tool, and they're fucking AI coding it? Do I have this right? github.com/nrwl/nx/secu...
I can already tell I'm going to love this esay about why this person is an AI hater anthonymoser.github.io/writing/ai/h...
I might have missed that. I wondered if it was related to other bits of news tbh
AMOC collapse will make refugees of us all. And it could happen in our lifetimes. We use this precious, fleeting moment to fight for a sustainable, resilient, compassionate world. Or we end up with no world at all.
www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...
I hope the real story about Quigley will come out. FYI I don't know anything but I do have suspicions
Good riddance. Quigley oversaw some of the worst monetary policy decisions in the Reserve Bank’s history, and a simply inept approach to prudential supervision of the banking sector. AoNZ is measurably worse off as a result of his tenure, and he was a failure as RBNZ Chair
we live in a world where it's pretty fair to consider something pretty bad might have happened to cause this, *especially* with that statement from Willis. www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/3608...
www.belfastlive.co.uk/news/norther... So in January @hleehurley.com and myself had a lengthy meeting with @naomilong.bsky.social we brought this to her attention and were told Mike wasn't interested in coming after families who procured meds over the border or elsewhere, she asked for it in writing
So I saw a tweet that was wondering whatever happened to a certain nz politicians wedding plans so in true me fashion I went investigating and found a video of his fiancé on LinkedIn from a few months ago post engagement announcement and she has no ring 👀 how’s your Friday going 😂😂
We literally don't know what will happen if the AMOC collapses. Europe will get colder. Superstorms will increase. The overall result is not clear but it will be functionally irreversible.
Collapse of critical Atlantic current is no longer low likelihood, study finds
TIL that in Aotearoa New Zealand the average life expectancy at Auckland City Mission is 55 and I feel that more people should know this
we really need to get authors to understand that (1) LibGen is not some shit Meta made and it predates Meta's involvement in the current AI bubble, and (2) that the bad part of what happened here is exclusively restricted to "Meta used this to train its stupid fucking AI bullshit"
The Toxic Avenger is clearing medical debt as marketing for the movie.
#nzpol Monthly jobs rose this month – great! Except we have 36,734 fewer jobs than at the election. There are 17,573 fewer jobs than this time last year. Total wages have fallen 4% in real terms. If the current economic plan is working – its not working for working people. A 🧵
Really mad that I now need to delete my github projects. Even the compromise positions are inevitably overrun by the anti- humans. Might as well have been a fundamentalist from the start.
LEGITIMATELY www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XGe...
With Stuff staff on strike, a reminder that archive.is bypasses the Stuff paywall and lets you read their news without giving their corporate management a cent. Also, run an adblocker. Fuck ads. www.rnz.co.nz/news/busines...
Help Mohammad and his farm ❤️
GitHub added Grok to CoPilot, apparently against the interests of employees at the company who (reasonably!) argued it goes against the supposed company values. 👀
I stopped using Microsoft Word and Excel months ago. The expiration is nigh and they are begging me to stay by touting Copilot AI. I stopped using their products specifically because of Copilot AI.
Worth a read, especially if you haven't made the sane decision to abandon GitHub. https://freedium.cfd/https://blog.stackademic.com/github-in-chaos-ceo-quits-outages-strike-is-the-programmers-paradise-collapsing-234141a4c4ea
Are you kidding? I need to get off fucking github now too? This was already the compromise.
enough.
This was pushed out with a rushed security review, a coerced and unwilling engineering team, and in full opposition to our supposed company values. If you don't want it, tell them. Social media and support forums. Leadership won't listen to employees. github.blog/changelog/20...
National keep cutting, and the economy keeps tanking; are we sure that their policies are economically sound?* *I'm aware they are not
My graphics card's driver regularly claims it is out of sync with its management software and reverts to on-board graphics, requiring a full reinstall to work again.
Good news, y’all! MechaHitler is coming to GitHub!!! But no, fuck this shit. I’m finally done, time to move my code elsewhere. All they care about at this point is Copilot and pushing through on their awful React rewrite. This is the last straw for me.
Auckland is on fire sale, I don't know how we can survive another year of this no boat, no butter, no ideas government #NZPol
Just one
In the context of payment processors trying to scrub everything even slightly sex-related from the internet I'd like to reiterate this take.
Government to pass "all soldiers are scabs" law www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...
📢 They are protesting in response to what they say are low pay offers and attempts to divide the workforce.
Grateful my desktop PC is not eligible for Windows 11. Do wish they hadn't broken my trust relationship with auto-update by forcing Copilot on me.
Look what they did to Notepad. Shut the fuck up. This is Notepad. You are not welcome here. Oh yeah "Let me use Copilot for Notepad". "I'm going to sign into my account for Notepad". What the fuck are you talking about. It's Notepad.
Those are all fun interpretations. I meant the second, maybe the third, and definitely don't do the fourth (LA but fantasy)
When writing fiction, don't turn your magic into technology.
Yeah, that's fair. We all sort-of have to act like it's not happening on a day to day level, eh?
CW: Suicide The time to talk about suicide and it's causes and a specific cause for a suicide that has occurred is absolutely when it has happened. Talk about it, don't hush it up like a dirty thing. Talk about it, in the hopes of stopping suicides we need to, we must talk about suicide
The "marketplace of ideas" is dead. It was killed by algorithms that reward extremism, echo chambers that prevent competition, and platforms that profit from polarisation. We need a new metaphor: the discursive ecosystem. constellation-of-rights.ghost.io/the-death-of...