🌞 Alexander Daychilde 🌞

Oh yeah, I assume it’s that level of stupidity. Idiots in charge with zero concept of laws or IT or security.

“half joking”

“half joking”

/hj

My brain always reads this as “/handjob” and it breaks my brain for a sec. :)

My investigation into Alpha School also reveals that the massive amounts of data the company collects on students, including videos of them, is stored in a Google Drive folder that anyone with the link—even if they’ve left the company, or if it was sent to them—could access. In turn, that sensitive material is viewed by more Alpha School employees than students and parents may realize.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I’m gonna stop you right there with a huge huge WHAT the FUCK. That is an incredible decision to have made. Stunning.

I saw that Alpha School maintains a spreadsheet which contains a list of student names, their grade, and an archive of their recordings which shows what’s happening on their screen, their remote tutor, and a video of the student taken via their webcam. This spreadsheet is not only available to anyone at the company, but is also shared in such a way that anyone on the internet who has the link can access the spreadsheet and the videos of students.

“If I wanted to, I could go there and just watch students. Anybody who worked in this capacity could watch the videos of students working on their laptops,” one Alpha School employee told me. “So many hours of just students’ faces […] I’m not sure parents understand exactly what’s going on with that data […] I don’t think that this is clearly communicated, because I’m sure there’d be a lot more opt outs if it was.”

Wonder how many pedos work for the company.

https://archive.ph/XO6Pn

Dunno if that’ll be better, but I created it to see if it helped :)

I did more skimming than reading of the linked article because I don’t care that much abou tthe topic, but I just want to say: We need more of this journalism. THIS is what journalists should be doing so much more of. Calling out lies and specifically this is a great format for that.

It shows you how insular these people must be. That ad was the result of meeting after meeting, plan after plan. They had convinced themselves that the public would eat it up. We would be like “Holy shit that’s amazing, let’s give you ALL our data and video and privacy!”. They actually thought we would go for it. lol.

I suppose the real issue is paying for the servers. There’s already pushback against the datacenters needed to power LLMs as it is. I suppose the capital to build would have to come from somewhere.

It’s a pity we don’t have a good government for a project like that. That would truly be a public service.

Did some calculations recently. If we took the cropland on which we grow corn strictly for ethanol production and put solar on it, something like 5% IIRC could power enough EVs to replace ALL vehicles in the US. Which means we could use a little more land for solar to power datacenters designed to be as environmentally friendly as possible. A government-run LLM run for the public.

It’s a pipe dream because in our current reality, it could never happen. But like universal health care and a living minimum wage, it should exist.

I know, I’m straying from the topic again. ADHD gonna ADHD. heh

I suppose as long as we were able to regulate AI companies to make sure they were forced to be upfront, honest, useful… it would be a sufficient compromise. But I’m sure we can’t even have that little.

more structure. [etc, trimmed quote]

I’m on board with wanting this :)

LLMs will get worse and shittier Why would they?

Not from the side of them gaining more knowledge but from the side of companies creating them monetizing and otherwise enshittifying them.

If we had a competitive open-source LLM…

So you’re not wrong, I agree; but I was speaking of a different angle. heh

Precisely that one, yes :)

So kinda like an ethical LLM^[1]. I’d be on board with that.

I know it’s unpopular to say, but I’ve found the latest version of Gemini to be pretty useful. But you have to know what they’re good for and not. General knowledge? Generally pretty decent. But you have to ask for sources and check those sources, and don’t tell it what you think, ask it what it knows and to admit when it doesn’t know things. I wouldn’t put my life on the line, but for looking up random stuff, it’s pretty decent.

I know LLMs will get worse and shittier, which I think is a bummer, because they could be so damned useful.

Knowledge rot is already a problem and has been for years – where you try to follow some links only to find they’re dead, or people deleted their content. The anecdotes of finding some old problem and someone just said “I figured it out”. Sure, archival won’t fix that specific example, but the principle is there - we lose so much information.

It would be nice if we had a government that worked for We the People and made information archival mandatory — likr the Library of Congress already does with printed materials.

That’s just a plus^[1].

The way I read their comment was pointing out that the employer (the school district) should be providing sufficient printing. :shrug: But there’s many ways to interpret, I suppose

That’s why I only buy Chinese.

dude, buying people is illegal!

;-)

It’s kinda hilarious that propaganda in the US talked about “EU is always watching you” as a part of the propaganda against government regulations. While some places over there are starting to see the rise of fascist parties, I think awareness of the US’s fall into fascism is hurting their cause as people are a little more aware than they might otherwise be.

And while I don’t generally like any government monitoring, if I had to choose, I’d choose EU monitoring over US monitoring any day, considering how our democracy has long been secondary to capitalism (with our own special twist of that old socialist phrase, for us “Taking the resources of the many to concentrate in the hands of the few ultra-wealthy”)

Our oligarchs have corrupted the entire system, and our government allows us just enough to survive while funelling all the resources up to the oligarchs. They have more than they could possibly spend, and they still demand more More MORE M O R E.

Back to cameras: In this case, more data, more control, more intimidation, more fear.

I know a lot of times replies are viewed as “You’re wrong!” but this, if anything, I think reinforces your comment:

I went looking for statistics and couldn’t find any, but did run across these assertions:

1. CCTVs of undefined/all types aupposedly increased crime clearance rates (“solved”) by around 20%. I suspect most of these are higher-quality ones in businesses or on public streets
2. Amazon claims 55% reduction in crime in pilot programs with doorbell cameras but a study by some org of that situation found no statistical difference

Certainly people are becoming more aware of those cameras and perhaps covering up to disguise their identity. So at most they might deter someone from going for your house, but as they become even more common, that effect will probably drop off.

But what if some stranger loses their dog? You could have helped, but NOoOOOOooooo you had to be selfish with your privacy you MONSTER.

I love seeing this story… it reminds me of 30 years ago when I worked in the telephone industry. Heard about telephone copmanies rolling out service in very very rural areas - running signals over barbed-wire fences because it was too expensive to run dedicated cables. That did degrade the signal, but it worked.

I know it’s a completely different thing entirely, but it just gave me nostalgia remembering hearing about that.