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The GPT-4 barrier has finally been broken
Another fine review from Simon Willison: Four weeks ago, GPT-4 remained the undisputed champion: consistently at the top of every key benchmark, but more importantly the clear winner in terms of “vibes”. Almost everyone investing serious time exploring LLMs agreed that it was the most capable default model for the majority of tasks—and had been
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They say that the essence of comedy is recognition; the thing about @damienslash’s “Select All” ep2 is that I’m sure that I’ve met some of these people
Also: it’s the first time I’ve seen the trust & safety community properly mocked in mainstream comedy. Worth a listen. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001p7fh
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I love independent media but when @BylineTimesPod starts with someone saying how Marx (150+/-10 years ago) explained how capitalism is “not sustainable in the long term…”
…that’s when I know I’m in for a painful listening experience. Still, it’s worth airing if only to hear the other side, to hear whether there’s more than merely a faith-based critique (“…ancient book worshipping huge beard in the sky”) of the structural inequities in modern living.
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Google Is Getting Thousands of Deepfake Porn Complaints | WIRED
At some point the battle against deep fakes is going to run into wholly-fabricated fake content which is neither copyrightable nor copyrighted… at which point DMCA will surely cease to be a useful tool unless augmented by “image rights” for individuals. But that cure might be worse than the disease; I’m not convinced that copyright-style
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CACM Is Now Open Access | Communications of the ACM
I rather wish that this had happened a few decades ago, when it would have been much more transformative than today https://cacm.acm.org/news/cacm-is-now-open-access-2/
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Would Terry Pratchett be in favour of, or against, artificial intelligence and its impact on writing?
I think he would be in favour of the technology but cautious about the nature of (and how we describe) its output: https://mastodon.social/@alecmuffett/112035424118762158
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Cyberpunk Librarian: “Okay, I found this on Reddit and I had to share it”
Nice, touching computer history story, with a happy ending. https://hackers.town/@CyberpunkLibrarian/112046696080448828
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TikTok users bombard House offices over bill that could ban the app – Live Updates | POLITICO
At the time of writing the Republican house staffers are saying that “the [TikTok] campaign is backfiring”, entrenching anti-platform sentiment amongst representatives. I wonder how much public sentiment is required before they apply the adjective “backfiring” to the draft legislation? https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/03/07/congress/tiktok-users-revolt-00145633
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FlipperZero vs: NSO’s Pegasus vs: Gamma FinFisher vs: Export Controls & the Wassenaar Arrangement: the difference is intent
I have spent far more than a decade – although the last decade has doubtless been the most interesting – explaining to peers in Digital Rights Civil Society that “it’s a bad idea to attempt to regulate the shape of technology, because of the principle of dual-use.” I’ve laid open bets – and I’ve never