If this world wasn’t run by disgusting psychopaths an organization like this wouldn’t be and shouldn’t be necessary but since it is, I applaud the work sincerely and wish you the best of luck.
This is correct. An LLM is a tool. Having a better guitar doesn’t make you sound good if you don’t know how to play. If you were a low skill software systems etc arch before LLM you’re gonna be a bad one after as well. Someone at some point is deciding what the agent should be doing. LLMs compete more with entry level / juniors.
I miss the analog of this community from the 90s. We had actual principles and ethos and wouldn’t have been caught dead upvoting and using software from the frickin NSA. Not that it’s any surprise here. Contemporary San Francisco driven software culture which is the majority represented on this forum have no qualms with FAANG ethics, open source is not really important either.
Oh I’m sorry the NSA didn’t spy on the whole country “wittingly” according to our leaders, carry on and use their software no ethical conflict here.
Having been in Seattle, I’m not sure there was a time the NSA wasn’t involved with technology — eg, UW hosted meetups between researchers, criminals, and the government at least that long.
Who built the Echelon follow-up, proto-dragnet system that provided the framework for the spying you bemoan? — the one extended and taken live in the early 2000s? Those same 90s hackers you glorify.
> provided the framework for the spying you bemoan
The community I’m talking about definitely weren’t like secretly building tools for these agencies. I mean this sincerely I have no idea what point you’re making. The agencies existed and made tech so by logical necessity people worked there. I didn’t say all people in computing.
There was a prevalent community of programmers and hackers who understood what these organizations represented and would never be on a forum blithely talking about some tool they made as if it was acceptable. Shame on anyone using these tools and the lack of objection to this post is a metric of how disgusting computing culture and really this forum are.
> The community I’m talking about definitely weren’t like secretly building tools for these agencies. I mean this sincerely I have no idea what point you’re making.
You knew exactly what point I’m making, because it’s the first thing you responded to. And indeed, what you responsed to throughout your question. So no, you’re not being sincere.
Those groups always interacted and your bald assertion of their morality is directly contradicted by my experience of their interactions (eg, criminals and government corresponding at UW) and the change in Boomer and Gen X hackers following 9/11.
> There was a prevalent community of programmers and hackers who understood what these organizations represented and would never be on a forum blithely talking about some tool they made as if it was acceptable.
From their computers that originated in a US Navy lab?
Again, my experience from Seattle is that the idealism was always more show than reality — and government technologies were not only consumed, but built on contract when interests aligned (eg, stopping cyber warfare or dismantling terrorist networks).
What you’re describing — ineffective moral absolutism — wasn’t what I recall from the 90s hacker ethos that always existed in a liminal zone, but rather the 2010s era co-opting of existing groups (eg, Anyonymous) for moral crusading.
> From their computers that originated in a US Navy lab?
This is a logical non sequitur. It’s like being fed your lunch by your kidnapper and when you protest they say, you’re using the energy I provided to protest. Like that’s a contradiction somehow, it’s not.
Whatever the participation in the past may have been does nothing to excuse or make okay future behavior.
And to the extent I did understand your point, I was confused because it was such a strawman. As I explained I wasn’t talking about every person in computing (of course). Interacted doesn’t mean they were the same or had no moral distinction.
> ineffective moral absolutism
I don’t even know where to start with how flawed your thinking is. Effectiveness isn’t the driver for having morals. And obviously it was effective because I’m here protesting. Neither is it absolutism. Objecting to the gross abuse of our government doesn’t equate with absolutism.
Computers should serve their owners not corporate interests and dragnet surveillance. That was understood. 2010s Anonymous was a different thing in a different context that I wasn’t contemplating.
do please share your "ethical" software stack that doesn't include contributions from "unethical" sources involved in spying, wars, human rights violations, etc
what sort of device did you type this comment from?
I was waiting for this comment. So because the whole industry is corrupt, two wrongs make a right and we should champion the NSA and both use and discuss their software as if it’s totally normal and they’re just a fine organization. Have I got that right?
I don’t also pretend that it’s ok to use software from shit organizations that are a cancer on our civilization, no. Even if I did, two wrongs don’t make a right, and nothing I personally say or do or not, does anything to absolve the NSA.
However you slice it you have no argument here. Being held hostage by corporate interests in computing doesn’t make it okay to hold hands with one of the worst organizations on Earth.
By your twisted logic, because it’s practically impossible to avoid proprietary firmware owned by corporations, we should completely acquiesce to all forms of digital abuse by the government and actually should participate in their computing programs. Listen to yourself.
You’d be telling people who lived under an evil dictatorship to shut up because they walk the roads the govt provides.
you're the one trying to shame people about using software you don't like by setting an impossible standard, how can you get upset when someone does it back to you and points out you don't fit it either? could you be any denser?
CSS is the only thing from browsers we actually need. The rest can be done in a terminal. Contemporary terminals could even render the UI with way less memory. The browser is a nightmare because it wasn’t architected to run applications.
> The browser ... wasn’t architected to run applications.
Could you explain this? What prevents the browser from running applications? How should it have been architected otherwise if running applications was the goal?
Actually real AI isn’t going to be possible unless we return to this arch. Contemporary stacks are wasting 80% of their energy which we now need for AI. Graphics and videos are not a key or necessary part of most computing workflows.
I love this! I’ve been working on a 6502 kernel. I have an arch trick to give the 6502 tons of memory so it can do a kind of Genera-like babashka lisp machine.
The "problem" back then was that nothing required sites to provide a rating and most of them didn't. Then you didn't have much of a content rating system, instead you effectively had a choice for what to do with "unrated" sites where if you allow them you allow essentially the whole internet and if you block them you might as well save yourself some money by calling up your ISP to cancel.
This could pretty easily be solved by just giving sites some incentive to actually provide a rating.
Right if you’re not a mouthpiece for the US State Depts horrific foreign policy you’re a Russian propagandist. My family fought in every war going back to the Revolution and I think our policy on Russia is complete shit. AFAIC we started the whole conflict.
I would direct you to George Kennan[1] and his 1997 NYT article where he said, among other things:
"... expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking ..."
Is it your position that he was paid for, or in some way disingenuously held, this view ?
I don't have strong opinions on this topic but I note with interest that there seem to be contrary viewpoints that aren't not puppets/trolls.
It doesn't matter if he was paid and I have no indication Greenwald ever was either. Only that this line of thinking aligns with Russian propaganda and is also complete nonsense.
Saying we should constrain the sovereignty of Eastern European nations to not hurt the feelings of their most dangerous rival is just bullshit. Russia's goals are simply neoimperialist and they obviously had no intention of waiting for Ukraine to join NATO or the EU before invading. They certainly had no similar provocation to snatch territory from Moldova and Georgia.
Kennan was arguing a Russian position, which makes sense given his long focus on Russia, and time there. What he wrote doesn’t actually support the idea that the West “started” anything.
Strengthening a defensive alliance is not “starting” something, that’s just the usual narcissistic gaslighting used by people with nefarious intent.
You missed the news where our own state dept officials are on leaked calls hand selecting the anti Russian government of Ukraine weeks before their coup or the news where Merkel admitted we negotiated treaties with Russia over Ukraine in bad faith.
The war started with our expansion of NATO, followed by couping Ukraines govt, multiple fake peace treaties, and finally Ukraine murdering thousands of culturally Russian civilians in Eastern Ukraine. I count a war as started when someone starts murdering people w the military not when someone walks over a border. Although your narrative doesn’t work then right?
Ah yes, the "culturally russian civilians" that... were mostly part of the ukraine army or the russian sponsored rebellion. Boy. How awful.
> I count a war as started when someone starts murdering people w the military
So saddam hussein started the second iraq-america war?
Don't answer that.
Also tell me more about your evidence of united states soldiers landing in ukraine and killing/capturing the existing government to replace it, that sounds like a really big scandal we should be talking about!
(Also, gee, I wonder why a government would be "anti-russian" during the past 50 years. Hmmm, nope, nothing comes to mind. Must be racism or something)
tell me more about your evidence of united states soldiers landing in ukraine and killing/capturing the existing government to replace it
We have the phone recordings of our government picking the new government BEFORE the coup. What part of that don’t you understand?
So saddam hussein started the second iraq-america war?
Don't answer that.
Whatever your counterpoint is here it’s so weak I don’t even know what it is. Using the military to kill civilians in Eastern Ukraine was definitely the start of the war, you can save the attempt at cleverness.
> Using the military to kill civilians in Eastern Ukraine was definitely the start of the war, you can save the attempt at cleverness.
I mean, you just made this up out of whole cloth. It's fiction, no it's worse than that, it's a deliberate lie, a fraud, a sham. And not a particularly believeable one either.
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