is biometric "gait analysis" total bullshit? it feels like total bullshit, but I only DuckDuckWent for 20 seconds or so, idk
this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2024
28 points (96.7% liked)
TechTakes
1435 readers
135 users here now
Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.
For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
currently in vc delusion, the public just doesn’t understand how to move about efficiently
the levels of not-even-wrong from these dipshits continue to be astounding
If I mathed right that'd be one waymo every 350 feet of road on average. Is that a lot? It sounds like it might be a lot. Especially since self-driving cars greatest weakness appears to be driving in the vicinity of other self-driving cars.
I think the idea is to solve that by networking all the self-driving cars together. I'm sure the long history of trying to get vendors to agree on a standard when they all benefit individually from the lock-in of proprietary systems has nothing to teach us about this prospect.
load more comments
(5 replies)
If you asked people what they wanted, they would say a car that drives itself
Is that a Henry Ford reference? Very clever lol
load more comments
(1 replies)
Eugenics in action:
Danish parenting tests under fire after baby removed from Greenlandic mother
Psychometric tests are widely used in Denmark as part of child protection investigations into new parents, and have long been criticised by human rights bodies as culturally unsuitable for Greenlandic people and other minorities.
In a 2022 report, the institute said that because the tests were not adapted to take cultural differences into account, Greenlandic parents ran “the risk of obtaining low test scores, so that it is concluded, for example, that they have reduced cognitive abilities, without there being actual evidence for this."
Psychological assessments of her were made by a Danish-speaking psychologist. Kronvold, whose first language is Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic), is not fluent in Danish.
Oh man that is so grim
Kronvold, 38, was given an FKU test in 2014 before the birth of her second child, a boy, and again recently while pregnant with her third child. Speaking through an intermediary, she told the Guardian that on this last occasion she was told it was to see if she was “civilised enough”.
load more comments
(1 replies)
billy spears got it right. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark
I woke up and immediately read about something called "Defense Llama". The horrors are never ceasing: https://theintercept.com/2024/11/24/defense-llama-meta-military/
Scale AI advertised their chatbot as being able to:
apply the power of generative AI to their unique use cases, such as planning military or intelligence operations and understanding adversary vulnerabilities
However their marketing material, as is tradition, include an example of terrible advice. Which is not great given it's about blowing up a building "while minimizing collateral damage".
Scale AI's response to the news pointing this out -- complaining that everyone took their murderbot marketing material seriously:
The claim that a response from a hypothetical website example represents what actually comes from a deployed, fine-tuned LLM that is trained on relevant materials for an end user is ridiculous.
On the one hand, that spectacular failure could potentially dissuade the military from buying in and prolonging this bubble. On the other hand, having an accountability sink for war crimes would be a tempting offer to your average army.
I’ve been wondering about this
One the one hand, military procurement (at least afaik) tends toward complete functional product
On the other hand, military R&D programs have been among the most spectacularly profligate financial black holes in recent decades
None of the options involved feel great, even if “it gets shunted from mil procurement and all industry claims get publicly brandished as the bullshit it is” comes to pass (which tbh still feels like an optimistic outcome, with unclear time horizons)
I mean it fits into the pattern of procurement projects that aren't allowed to fail despite having had serious coherence issues starting at the design stage. Though the military is usually less prone to the "problem in search of a solution" dynamic that VCs are prone to if a project gets started it can shamble forwards as a zombie for years before anyone finds the political will to kill it.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Software licensing is notoriously labyrinthine, so resources like the site Microsoft will close – Get Licensing Ready – can be very handy. Today, the site offers over 50 training modules plus documentation.
I'm sorry, mister MSFT, why did you cause there to be more educational content about your stupid licenses than there is for theoretical physics in an undergrad programme, have you ever considered that it's time to stop? Get some help?
To be fair “training modules" can be quite brief. 50 online training modules is probably less work than one semester of Physics I.
load more comments
(1 replies)
My organic chemistry professor used ChatGPT to write a lab procedure. My other chemistry professor's daughter is VP of AI at Microsoft. AAAAA
do you have it? i'm in this field and i wonder how badly it fucked up
there are two incredible footguns in there, both of which can be trivially avoided
Wait I know nothing about chemistry but I'm curious now, what are the footguns?
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/footgun
i'll pick up handbook for a similar course that i was TA for and i'll take it apart Soon™
load more comments
(5 replies)
Two posts in two weeks about professors using ChatGPT has me questioning my desire to go back to school
load more comments
(2 replies)
Starting things off with a fresh post from Brian Merchant: Tech under Trump, part 1
load more comments
(2 replies)
OT: is Tallinn nice?
i've been there for few days for conference once and it does look at least like a nice place to visit with no obvious glaring problems to be seen. walkable, organized, you can get around without a car np, doesn't seem to be extremely expensive but again, i haven't been there for a long time. it's like you took nicer parts of Warsaw, slapped a port next to it and cooled down a few degrees
unless you're talking about that EA techbro billionaire, then i've got no idea
looking to move?