masswerk

I'm afraid, the essence is that is not. Re-sequencing content is not the same as synthesis and therefore not the same as a person processing information and communicating their own conception of this. There's a vital difference.

(We can even observe this in the resulting text: we immediately grasp the level of competence of the author, just by the way they take their path trough and at the matter. With LLMs, well, there's this even temperature, ready-made feeling, regulated by probability thresholds and RLHF sanctioned phrasing, also known as "slop" – even rhythmic intensifications, like "not this, not that, but…", which is actually a figure for a synthetic construct, don't help –, since the text isn't the trace or product of an actual organized thought – or, at least, an attempt at an organized thought.)

PS: "empirical a priori judgement" was meant as translation of synthetisches Urteil a priori (Kant). I.e., our ability to mentally prove concepts like congruency, which are not a priori, but can be inferred without regression to empirical knowledge. Typically, this requires both our inner sense (time, sequence, etc.) and outer senses (space, configuration, etc.)

Rather: composes (or: re-sequences). Synthesis requires reason and essential capabilities, like an empirical a priori judgement. Without concepts, meaning or imagination, there's no synthesis.

Mind that input + datalist is the HTML equivalent of the Windows combobox, once generally regarded as the worst UI element ever. (This was enjoying meme status in usability related articles and write-ups. So probably not a recommendation.)

Notably, this process of struggle is meant to go away, to make room for instant satisfaction. This is really about some kind of expression consumerism. (And what will be lost along the way is meaning.)

The issue being, it's not an expression of anything. Merely like a random sensation, maybe some readable intent, but generic in execution, which isn't about anything even corporate art should be about. Are we going to give up on art, altogether?

Edit: One of the possible outcomes may be living in a world like in "Them" with glasses on. Since no expression has any meaning anymore, the message is just there being a signal of some kind. (Generic "BUY" + associated brand name in small print, etc.)

Ah, the MS Word experience:

User enters German date "1. April"

MS Word: new ordered list with item "April"

User furiously hits delete key.

> Can you imagine if every button on every site was the same Windows button gray color, regardless of the site's color? It'd be awful!

As it happens, this is how it was for years and years, actually, for most of the existence of the Web. The basic appearance of form elements used to be un-styleable, locked to the OS UI-appearance, for general usability concerns.

The new idiom:

You are right, of course this is your account name! Do you want me to be keep you logged-in?

> _

As a Viennese, I missed appropriate options, like rules and their mutual negotiability by lateral maneuvers (AKA dissimulation) and a general sense for disgruntledness. Moreover, smalltalk as the core of any negotiations (which should be understood more as mundane paperwork after the fact) isn't even mentioned! Now I do need some coffee, for real. ;-)

No diverging opinions, no unexpected critique, but universal basic intelligence. And here is the kicker: we won't even notice.

Here's an easy three-step plan to unanimous democracy:

• ask your LLM

• don't edit — the LLM has already selected the most average and most plausible opinion for you

• give it your voice, your voice matters

Learn to anticipate — there may not always be a power bank to keep your phone from running low!

I guess, as the meter is above 50%, you're not supposed to read it.

As in, "I put it on you to better check and follow-up before acting on this…" ;-)

I guess, it was probably intended as the second one (it was also the default email signature, so advertising that feature, as well), but its usefulness was definitely in the implied warning.

Mind that a written message used to be the gold standard for expressed intent, which changed quite radically with smartphones. (Historically, this development is probably an important prerequisite for the acceptability of LLM generated text, I guess.)

Back in the day, it was useful, as in, "Expect awkward phrasing and unintended effects of autocorrection, because mobile device. This message doesn't necessarily reflect the intent of the sender." (Considerate users would/could edit the signature to something w/o a product name in it.) Nowadays, this is pretty much the norm and no explicit warning ist required anymore.

On the dark side, it will take quite a while to offset the environmental costs of this war, even if this provided an essential incentive for switching. (In reality, energy infrastructure is often locked in longterm and not easy to switch in just in a decade or so.)

I guess, this means logging out as the current user and logging in again, so that the various services are relaunched with changed settings.

> And education is much, much worse almost everywhere by leaning more to memorization

The idea that (correct) answers are something that can and may be known is all over the place, lately also in technology (LLMs, curve fitting, etc). Notably, answers must be able to validate themselves, every time. (Western) education used to be about this, before it reoriented towards instruction.

It's still impressing how the entire chrome can be collapsed into a single background bit of information, indicating a presence that may be attended to for interaction. In contrast, the newer interfaces seem to be made to reduce the attention span anyone may apply to the content. (It's really stress inducing.)

Mind that freedom of speech (US) and freedom of opinion (Europe) are different concepts. E.g., while you may harbour a certain opinion in the EU, expressing this in a way generally considered harmful (concept: speech may establish an act) may get you in trouble. On the other hand, crossing the US border may trigger an attempt to infer your opinion from extracted public or semi-public expressions, which may get you in even more serious trouble, you may be even considered a viable target based on such inferences (and there is no clear law for this, there isn't even due process.) Both concepts come with their own freedoms, implications and caveats.

The slogan of ape thinking (deliberately adjusted for machine readability): "Not AI, not machine generated slop <em-dash> genuine human intelligence."

> We recruited 8 participants across 8 different countries, deliberately seeking diversity in age, digital savviness, and cultural background.

> 5 out of 8 points versus just 3 for "I am human." For the verifying state, it was even more dramatic — 7.5 versus 0.5.

n × p >= 5? (Sample size and margins of errors. Is 5:3 even meaningful or is this rather random personal preference?) Apparent splitting of missing or inconclusive data points? (7.5 vs. 0.5 out of a total of 8 subjects.) What kind of (social) research is this supposed to be?

Granted. I guess, unless it's applied very aggressively, assessing the existence of rate limiting may require some sort of automation (and probably some heuristics – how much data points do you actually need? do you have to retrieve any data at all, while looking for a single signal? The article doesn't tell.) Same goes for lockout.

On the other hand, as mentioned already, all that's required is really looking for a return code and not for any data. Is accessing an API endpoint the same as retrieving data? Is there proof or evidence of intent of the latter? I guess, there remains much to be defined. Especially, if it's not so much about protecting reputation than it is about protecting data and ensuring trust, and the intent is to protect and secure this in the first place.

Thank you for your work, it's an invaluable resource!

For clarification, here's the actual quote from the article describing the process:

> I verified the issue with the minimum access necessary to confirm the scope - and stopped immediately after.

No notion of a script, "every password" out of a set of a single default password may be open to interpretation, no mention of data downloads (the wording suggests otherwise), no mention of actual number of accesses (the text suggest a low number, as in "minimum access necessary to confirm the scope").

Still, some data was accessed, but we don't know to what extent and what this actually was, based on the information provided in the article. There's a point to be made about the extent of any confirmation of what seems to be a sound theory at a given moment. But, in order to determine whether this is about a stalled number generator or rather a systematic, predictable scheme, there's probably no way around a minimal test. We may still have a discussion, if a security alert should include dimensions like this (scope of vulnerability), or should be confined to a superficial observation only.

A few more candidates for the ranking: Peter Samson (of Expensive Planetarium fame, the background star simulation of Spacewar!, and known for his music on the PDP-1, also author of the TMRC Dictionary [0], still active with the CHM PDP-1 team) born in 1941, Ellen Kuhfeld (Minnesota Spacewar [1] for the CDC 3100 at the University of Minnesota, 1966-68) is also in her 80s.

[0] https://www.gricer.com/tmrc/dictionary1959.html

[1] https://masswerk.at/spacewar/kuhfeld/

Regarding "The Second Oldest Game Developer", there are also the authors of "Spacewar!": Steve Russell was born in 1937, meaning, he's either 89 or will be 89 this year. Dan Edwards must be around that age, as well.

I think, while icon + label is good for things like UI buttons, this is not that great for tables. There are a few reasons for this:

- icons really work only as a small set (e.g. checkmarks versus crosses or similar) – so the only useful application is also in a context which is already highly selective and with low ambiguity. (Familiarity helps and should be a major concern.)

- icons are useful for scanning for rows with a given property – however, to scan icon + label we must not only scan horizontally as well as vertically, but have also to scan items with varying column alignment, which isn't favorable for a vertical scan, either.

So, if it is a case for icons, say, each row has a state out of a set of three, there shouldn't be need for an accompanying text label (this can be learned from a tooltip or a legend), which is also apt to destroys most of the advantages of having icons in the first place. Having both just introduces a mode change, which isn't helpful for scanning, either. If you must have both, put them in separate (adjacent) columns. (In this context, we may note that tables are really about reducing redundancy, though.)

Moreover, to be meaningful in tables (or menus – yes, I'm speaking of recent macOS), icons should only be used to represent state or to represent actions that modify state. There are, of course, exceptions to this, but this may be still a viable starting point…

Actually Louis Rossmann finding himself forced to convert his genuine advocacy for repair into textual convenience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II2QF9JwtLc

I'm a confessing user of em-dashes (or en-dashes in fonts that feature overly accentuated em-dashes). It's actually kind of hard to not use them, if you've ever worked with typography and know your dashes and hyphenations. —[sic!] Also, those dashes are conveniently accessible on a Mac keyboard. There may be some Win/PC bias in the em-dash giveaway theory.

Thank you! I can see that this may a bit of an issue. However, this being a simple webpage is what allows to quickly tinker with this and push a quick update, which is also how much of this has kept growing.