maybe this just betrays that i don't know shit about fuck, but it feels like this xkcd would make more sense if the frequentist did the experiment more than once

imo academia in the us selects for self-serious mini-tyrants. people unable to sleaze their way to an equivalent position in the job market, so they go with a position where their subordinates have no agency or recourse for inappropriate behavior and are entirely dependent on them for their funding and their career progress^[by standing up to my piece of shit advisor, i have left with just a master's degree after five years, despite definitely having enough research completed under this advisor to leave with a phd. i chose to stand up for myself and try to end this cycle instead of adding an acronym to my title. arguably a mistake, idk, there is a robert frost poem about this.]. the university system here seems to only care if a professor brings in grant money

if so, they can do whatever they want.

e.g. a year ago a student of mine with a documented, legally required accommodation was just straight denied it by a professor in my department. this poor student had to go through some equal opportunity claim just to have his accommodation met, and the professor is still there, having suffered no consequences.

maybe i should apply to a phd program outside of the us. i speak spanish (but slowly, y como un gringo) 🤷

😭

you seem like the kind of dork whose brain literally explodes when you read this sentence

clanker

edit: this may be used to refer to the chatbots themselves, rather than those who fondle chatbots

an unintended side effect of this is people who can't or don't want to verify their age going to less reputable sources. so even though it can be done in a "privacy-respecting fashion" (see, for example, soatok's post on this^[https://soatok.blog/2025/07/31/age-verification-doesnt-need-to-be-a-privacy-footgun/] ), it's still a bad idea.

additionally, in my opinion no one who wants to enact such a thing is doing it in good faith. it is a pretense towards an ulterior goal^[e.g. "steam porn games" → "this person's existence is inherently sexual" → "ban lgbtq content"]

weird fuck's post reads to me as the mistake of thinking web/js is uniquely capable of dynamic code loading

what is stopping a desktop or mobile client from running new/different code? the only solution im aware of (we're in halting problem territory here, probably, though grapheneos has "prevent DCL from storage/memory" toggles so idk) is to inspect the code to make sure it does what they say and then cryptographically sign it

the question was rhetorical, but also thank you for the links! <3

i am not surprised that they are all this dumb: it takes an especially stupid person to decide "yes, i am fine allowing this machine to speak for me". even more so when it's made clear that the machine is a stochastic parrot trained via exploitation of the global south and massive amounts of plagiarism and that it also cooks the planet

Thank you for the expression of sympathy. The good news is I actually love computer science, it fucking rules.

Also, I recorded this professor screaming at me and have documented all the plagiarism. I am waiting to officially leave the university to file a formal complaint. He may not get in any real trouble (universities will always go to bat for abusive researchers as long as they bring in grant money), but news will get out eventually.

So when I see people using LLMs to create things instead of doing it themselves, I can’t relate. Why do that when you can get the pleasure from doing it yourself? I guess if making money is the primary motivating factor, then it makes sense. But for me it is totally self-defeating.

I have a theory (similar to that "it's been vibe coding all along" post) that it's a combination of wishful thinking, lack of knowledge of real science, and a lack of any liberal arts skills, that altogether produces this farce.

I think it's a good explanation for "the code has been battle tested because it's so old and widely used, if it had bugs/security issues, we would have discovered them by now", as well as the widespread "we invented a tech solution that is just a worse engineering solution". Looking at you, chain of self-driving cars.

i thought it was pretty funny <3

I appreciate this post very much. Thank you. <3

i have a potato that can study, send me your venmo if interested