*Edit*: here at least, I am clearly not isolated!
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What's SOTA in this context, please?
@unchartedworlds
Oh, "state of the art". I mean we do have a very dynamic sense of what is novel, relevant, needed -
*Edit*: here at least, I am clearly not isolated!
Perhaps I am increasingly isolated in holding this position, but I have no interest in reading "AI"-generated slop.
I love reading.
I read people's blogs and toots and whatever *because people wrote them* and I want to read their own thoughts and opinions.
I buy books, and read numerous different authors. I like finding new authors, bringing new ideas, styles etc.
Same with "AI" images. I'd prefer no image at all.
@neil How anyone can read unedited AI-generated stuff is beyond me. It is so empty, so soulless; somehow using so many words to say nothing at all. It is boring to read.
The false tone of helpfulness is grating. The puffery reminds me of long pre-ambles on recipe sites.
AI-art also lacks that something. It is so smooth and so normalised and boring. The mass average of everyone's work is boring, for it can say nothing new.
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*Edit*: here at least, I am clearly not isolated!
Perhaps I am increasingly isolated in holding this position, but I have no interest in reading "AI"-generated slop.
I love reading.
I read people's blogs and toots and whatever *because people wrote them* and I want to read their own thoughts and opinions.
I buy books, and read numerous different authors. I like finding new authors, bringing new ideas, styles etc.
Same with "AI" images. I'd prefer no image at all.
@neil I take the same view but I think we are increasingly in the minority. I hate what I see of AI. We keep being told of the benefits but all I see is slop, people losing their jobs and tech-bros getting richer.
I worry about what it means for creatives (and I include myself in that although it's not how I make a living) but moreso, what it means for us as a species. Enfeeblement and disempowerment most probably. -
@neil What I found really depressingly interesting is that I find it really fatiguing, and I already suffer from a huge amount of fatigue. All the dodging AI, my brain-fogged head working harder to filter things out, the heart sink as I get tricked and only later realise something was off.
Like recipes! Following along on my phone whilst already overwhelmed by what I'm doing, and then finding out mid-way through following a recipe that, hang on a sec, this is AI nonsense.
@FrazzledBrynn @neil
Yes! The constant gatekeeping is exhausting. In my profession, it's increasingly an issue where people (lay persons and professionals alike) have used AI to draft a document which looks legit but on closer inspection turns out to be a pile of shit. -
@neil I'm still trying to find the right words for why Ai stuff feels so unappealing. I think it's that they have no provenance? Theres nothing to contextualise it.
@diffractie I don't like the feeling that I might be the first person to look at/read/encounter something.
It just feels so inherently like it doesn't matter, it's like thinking you're on solid ground but when you check there's nothing holding you up, you've already gone over the edge of the cliff.
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Book recommendations from anyone, or only from @neil?
Some of mine are here: @booktrail
@unchartedworlds @neil @booktrail welcome from anyone. Thank you for the heads up
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*Edit*: here at least, I am clearly not isolated!
Perhaps I am increasingly isolated in holding this position, but I have no interest in reading "AI"-generated slop.
I love reading.
I read people's blogs and toots and whatever *because people wrote them* and I want to read their own thoughts and opinions.
I buy books, and read numerous different authors. I like finding new authors, bringing new ideas, styles etc.
Same with "AI" images. I'd prefer no image at all.
@neil I am with you. I also don't think it's just a Masto echo chamber; there is some pushback against GenAI slop around, but whether it'll be enough to stop the tsunami remains to be seen.
Look at Buzzfeed, it was always slop, but they did annoyingly well. Then they switched to GenAI slop and found nobody wants that to the point they're bankrupt.
I see reports that teens are both aware and weary of GenAI slop in their SM feeds.
So, we must push back as much as we can. There's slight hope...
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@neil >and relies on technology that is doing absolutely horrendous things to the environment, makes it absolutely unthinkable for me to partake.
And yet I have very old, very dear friends who seem to simply not care. Even after I have explained to them how bad it is for the world, and how hurtful to me.
I don't get it.
@rubyjones
Basically, yes to everything you've said Ruby. This is the issue going forward. People don't care. They will when it impacts them negatively but, of course, by then it's too late.
@neil -
@neil Quite.
I'm not opposed to machine learning; it's genuinely useful. I'm more ambivalent about LLMs, but that's more to do with the environmental impact, the way they were trained and the people involved in doing it than it is to do with the technology per se.
What profoundly offends me is the pretence that these things are capable of thought or creativity, of "generating" something that is actually going to be of interest to or provoke an emotional response in a human.
@hedders @neil Iβve been pondering this recently, too. Iβm as much against the generative/LLM material being used in lieu of that created by humans as anyone else, but the knee jerk reaction of many people towards βAIβ as whole now is grating on me.
AI is bloody brilliant, itβs doing incredible things with computers, from running my home central heating more efficiently, to modelling crowd behaviour at football matches, and predicting heart attacks.
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@FrazzledBrynn @neil
Yes! The constant gatekeeping is exhausting. In my profession, it's increasingly an issue where people (lay persons and professionals alike) have used AI to draft a document which looks legit but on closer inspection turns out to be a pile of shit.@Jaimieserotica @FrazzledBrynn Oh, so much this!
I often hear that "AI will mean the end of lawyers" but, for now at least, it just means more work for me :)
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@hedders @neil Iβve been pondering this recently, too. Iβm as much against the generative/LLM material being used in lieu of that created by humans as anyone else, but the knee jerk reaction of many people towards βAIβ as whole now is grating on me.
AI is bloody brilliant, itβs doing incredible things with computers, from running my home central heating more efficiently, to modelling crowd behaviour at football matches, and predicting heart attacks.
@hedders @neil But Big Tech is selling us a dream of general AI that isnβt a reality just yet, and the consumers donβt know enough about the technology to understand that.
The negative sentiment towards AI in general is, imho, undeserved. And itβs all because the shite theyβre selling at the moment is so dodgy. Itβs a real shame.
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@Jaimieserotica @FrazzledBrynn Oh, so much this!
I often hear that "AI will mean the end of lawyers" but, for now at least, it just means more work for me :)
@neil @FrazzledBrynn
Paralegals are already being let go in droves. Client facing/court-heavy roles like family and crime are probably safe for the time being but if I was a conveyancer I'd definitely be re-training without delay... -
@neil I find AI images a really strong flag that I'm not going to want to read an article.
I suspect at least part of the problem is that "experts" will tell you that a web page *has* to have an image to represent it (because that's what algorithms want), and people are panicked into finding *something* to fill that void.
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@unchartedworlds @neil @booktrail welcome from anyone. Thank you for the heads up
"Against the Grain" by James C Scott was a paradigm shifter to me last year!
DEBT follows right after: https://mastodon.acm.org/@nobody/116232495598467927
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@rubyjones @ahnlak @neil and Unsplash. And Wikipedia commons. And more besides I'm sure. There's just no need to use slop images, really.
@noodlemaz @ahnlak @neil Oh, yes, others exist, although I still find Pixabay the best.
Perhaps a good time to plug my article, 'Create your own book cover - without generative 'AI' which is full of free or cheap resources π
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@unchartedworlds @neil @booktrail welcome from anyone. Thank you for the heads up
@sephster @unchartedworlds @neil @booktrail If you like Scifi you could take a look at @mcrscifi 's previous list : https://mcrscifi.wordpress.com/previous-scifi-books/ Any book that scored over 4 is great over 3.5 is good. (IMHO)
One that falls just outside your 'last year' is Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh which I loved and was constantly wrong footed by.
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@neil @rubyjones libraries are also great! I get loads of ebooks from mine.
And authors support them too. Reading is very accessible thanks to them :)Sorry for flurry of replies
@noodlemaz @neil True, and libraries give authors monies, at least in the UK - get signed up to ALCS https://www.alcs.co.uk even if you're not a UK author.
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@rubyjones
Basically, yes to everything you've said Ruby. This is the issue going forward. People don't care. They will when it impacts them negatively but, of course, by then it's too late.
@neil@Jaimieserotica @neil Some do - like Neil, but it bums me out how many don't.
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*Edit*: here at least, I am clearly not isolated!
Perhaps I am increasingly isolated in holding this position, but I have no interest in reading "AI"-generated slop.
I love reading.
I read people's blogs and toots and whatever *because people wrote them* and I want to read their own thoughts and opinions.
I buy books, and read numerous different authors. I like finding new authors, bringing new ideas, styles etc.
Same with "AI" images. I'd prefer no image at all.
@neil Yes, I particularly dislike the trend of sticking a slop image at the top of a blog post just for the sake of it.
Pre-βAIβ it was often stock images and silly even then but worse now. (Iβve heard it originated in SEO/marketing advice but seems to have spread beyond corporate blogs.)
If there isnβt a real image actually connected with the subject matter, then the post doesnβt need an image. Slop adds nothing (less than nothing, even).
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*Edit*: here at least, I am clearly not isolated!
Perhaps I am increasingly isolated in holding this position, but I have no interest in reading "AI"-generated slop.
I love reading.
I read people's blogs and toots and whatever *because people wrote them* and I want to read their own thoughts and opinions.
I buy books, and read numerous different authors. I like finding new authors, bringing new ideas, styles etc.
Same with "AI" images. I'd prefer no image at all.
@neil This whole push for AI has had the opposite affect on me. Initially I liked it and used it, but that only lasted a few months. I went from not reading any books to reading something like 20 last year. Politics, History, Fiction, Horror... and I have continued reading this year. This year I've added art to my hobbies and although I don't think I'm that good, I see humanity in the flaws. I believe there is a use for AI, but it's not in the hands of the general public and it shouldn't be replacing genuine creativity.
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Disassembling Opcodes with a Font
Those who stay into the forbidden realm of font rendering quickly learn how convoluted and arcane it can be β LaTeX is a fully Turing-complete programming language, Unicode has over eighty invisible characters, and there are libraries that let you execute WebAssembly in a font. A great example of a fontβs hidden capabilities is Z80 Sans, a font that disassembles Z80 opcodes to assembly mnemonics.
If one pastes Z80 opcodes into a word processor and changes their font to Z80 Sans, the codes are rendered as their assembly mnemonics. The font manages this by abusing the Glyph Substitution Table and Glyph Positioning Table, two components of the OpenType standard. Fonts define relations between characters (internal representations used by the computer, such as ASCII and Unicode) and glyphs (the graphics actually displayed).
In some cases, though, the way a character is displayed depends on where it appears in a word, or what appears around it (Arabic characters are a common example, but an example from English is the ligature βΓ¦β). Z80 Sans defines all the possible glyphs for each nibble of the opcodes, then used a recursive descent parser to generate substitution rules which display the correct glyphs in context.
For a deeper dive into the pitfalls of text graphics, check out this font rendering engine written for a hobby OS. You can also use fonts to play games or talk to an LLM.
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@anarchia
2 settimane fa, sabato 28 febbraio 2026, iniziava lβaggressione militare israelo-Usa sullβIran, che prosegue senza sosta anche in queste ore. Raid sono segnalati in
