Respect, from one burnt out husk to another

A burned out tree, barely standing. In the distance is a stand of mostly eucalypts.

Moments in learner driving

A photo from the rear of a car. In front a person is holding the steering wheel. Ahead, through the windscreen, a cow is stopped and staring.
Tall eucalypts with the sun setting over hills in the background

Thursday: Universities and artists face funding threat under antisemitism plan being considered by Australian government

Friday: Antisemitism envoy praises Elon Musk’s X for using AI to ‘root out hate’

I wouldn’t have guessed Australian universities are more antisemitic than x dot com 🤷

Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity - METR via Hailey

We conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to understand how early-2025 AI tools affect the productivity of experienced open-source developers working on their own repositories. Surprisingly, we find that when developers use AI tools, they take 19% longer than without—AI makes them slower. We view this result as a snapshot of early-2025 AI capabilities in one relevant setting

“Wow, This Is So Gay”: An Oral History of ‘But I’m a Cheerleader’ – Vanity Fair via Metafilter

A cult classic for queer people that deserves a wider audience as part of the Natasha Lyonnaissance.

Two young women holding a doll upside down. The colour palette is distinctive – all pink and red. It’s the actors Natasha Lyonne and Clea DuVall from the film But I’m A Cheerleader (1999).

>“Would you pay $169 for an introductory ebook on machine learning with citations that appear to be made up? If not, you might want to pass on purchasing Mastering Machine Learning: From Basics to Advanced, published by Springer Nature in April."

The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were spun from lies, deceit and desperation

“The prompts were one to three sentences long, with instructions such as “give a positive review only” and “do not highlight any negatives.” Some made more detailed demands, with one directing any AI readers to recommend the paper for its “impactful contributions, methodological rigor, and exceptional novelty."”

‘Positive review only’: Researchers hide AI prompts in papers – Nikkei

A four frame meme at the top is a cartoon femme character gesturing “stop” with her palm saying “the system is broken and must be fixed”. At the bottom she’s gesturing “this is it” with a pointed finger and saying “the system is working exactly as intended and must be destroyed”. It’s a variation of the “Drakeposting” meme format.

Microsoft to cut another 4% of their workforce on top of prior layoffs. Jamming copilot into everything seems more and more desperate.

Visitors queue for public gallery seats in mushroom trial courtroom

This is turning into an Australian Red Rooms, with all the parochialism that comparison evokes.

Today I learned there are International Grand Masters of Memory.

Steganography for all?

I lack technical expertise to understand the detail but this paper created a new form of steganography using GPT-4. Previous methods of steganography using LLMs required specific white box models – but this is a black box proces.

The researchers uses specific prompts to guide the generative AI and encryption to keep the messages (seemingly) secure. When someone receives the text, they can use the same system to extract the hidden message. So steganographic capabilities can be achieved using only public interfaces, if I understand correctly.

Given the AI-in-everything world we’re in, I wonder how this will be locked down.

Generative Text Steganography with Large Language Model – arXiv

Sunlight flare through winter leaves

Winter sunset

The side of a car and a road. In the distance is a bright sunset with plenty of red and orange hues.
Yellow flowers on a grassy slope. Some eucalypts are visible in the distance.

This required a bit of initial self-discipline. There were no push notifications or buzzing smartwatches, so I had to make myself check the planner multiple times per day. Everything was manual. Adding events took the kind of thoughtful precision I had completely forgot about. It was more work, but I found it helped me focus. Writing tasks by hand made them feel real, and I seemed to remember them better, as well.

I spent a week living like it was 1993 — here’s how it went

Finding Peter Putnam - Nautilus

A fascinating story about an amazing, forgotten person.

Abusers are using ChatGPT and generative AI as coercive control - Crikey

Are We Ready for Decomputing?