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from the sniff-sniff-I-have-a-very-bad-code dept.
Speaking at the Noisebridge hackerspace Tuesday evening, Chelsea Manning implored a crowd of makers, nerds, and developers to be ethical coders.
"As a coder, I know that you can build a system and it works, but you're thinking about the immediate result, you're not thinking about that this particular code could be misused, or it could be used in a different manner," she said, as part of a conversation with Noisebridge co-founder Mitch Altman.
Altman began the conversation by asking about artificial intelligence and underscoring some of the risks in that field.
"We're now using huge datasets with all kinds of personal data, that we don't even know what information we're putting out there and what it's getting collected for," Manning said. "Our AI systems are getting better and better and better, and we don't know what the social consequences of that are. The code that we write, the bias that you see in some of the systems that you see, we don't know if we're causing feedback loops with those kinds of bias."
[...] "The tools that you make for marketing can also be used to kill people," Manning continued. "We have an obligation to think of the tools that we're making and how we're using them and not just churn out code for whatever reason. You want to think about how your end-user could misuse your code."
Guns don't kill people, code kills people.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 14 2017, @03:33PM (19 children)
Staff, whack his peepee! Someone is getting goofy with the spam mod again. Wonder if it's the same guy whose peepee you already whacked recently?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Thursday September 14 2017, @04:41PM (18 children)
Garbage comments like this (and, quite frankly, yours) are what the Spam mod is for.
I've just about had it with this web site. I could get news with fewer racist, sexist, zoophilia-ic, comments from freaking 4chan.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 14 2017, @05:01PM (12 children)
Spam is for advertising, thinly veiled or otherwise. Spam is not for troll posts.
And, good luck with 4chan. You may have a point to make, but you fail to make it when you overstate it.
(Score: 4, Informative) by SomeGuy on Thursday September 14 2017, @05:54PM
Incorrect. Please re-read the moderation guidelines: https://soylentnews.org/faq.pl?op=moderation#spam [soylentnews.org]
"Spam Mod
The spam moderation (spam mod) is to be used only on comments that genuinely qualify as spam. Spam is unsolicited advertisement, undesired and offtopic filth, or possibly illegal in general. Spam can come in many forms, but it differs from a troll comment in that it will have absolutely no substance, is completely undesired, are detrimental to the site, or worse."
(emphasis added) Also see the examples, which are almost dead ringers of this and several other comments under this story.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday September 14 2017, @05:54PM (9 children)
No according to the admins or the moderation guidelines...
(Score: 2, Troll) by aristarchus on Thursday September 14 2017, @07:09PM (8 children)
Spam mod is not for trolling? Really? You actually can learn something new every single day here on SoylentNews! I guess I should not have spam modded TMB for his contentless and lame troll posts.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday September 14 2017, @08:02PM (7 children)
I was told it's for dealing with persistent and *off-topic* trolls. I did spam-mod his beaky carrion-molesting ass once and got a month's mod-ban for it, but it's fairly clear he just doesn't like having the truth pointed out to him :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday September 14 2017, @09:49PM (3 children)
How is it that this particular group of folks, who revolted against Slashdot over a GUI change, is perfectly fine with Admins directly manipulating moderation and the mod-pool?
If Slashdot pulled this crap people would be freaking the hell out!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @10:52PM
How can you tell that the Slashdot admins don't do this kind of thing?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @12:22AM
Quite a few people have complained about it, but at least TMB is a hypocritical bitch who hates censorship but will lash out when he's picked on. Big fucking baby is what he is, makes runaway look like a mature and responsible adult.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday September 15 2017, @05:07AM
I've been wondering the exact same thing. These tech sites seem to attract a lot of hardcore authoritarian followers for some reason, and this baffles me, *especially* seeing how many of them there are in/around FOSS. Someone else here, I think it was Grishnakh, specifically said (assuming this is a he, please correct me if wrong) he notices a lot of RWA thinking and attitudes among engineers.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @01:32AM (2 children)
We can just as easily conclude that the left-leaning members don't like having the truth pointed out to them. They find truth to be "offensive".
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday September 15 2017, @05:04AM (1 child)
No, no we may not conclude this, because in the time I've been sampling this forum, I've found the self-admitted lefties are far more amenable to the truth and to changing their views if necessary. They also tend to be less deluded about basic aspects of humanity than the right-wing members to begin with.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @05:26PM
No, no we may not [anecdotes], because I've [anecdotes]! People who agree with me also agree with me!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday September 16 2017, @10:03AM
If we fill our our Homepage URL, it's a little ad. I'm telling you, it's a little advertisement. Which we're invited to put there. Pretty much invited. But believe me, I've looked at a lot, a lot of sites. And this one has a lot less advertising than some of them. Because the Spam mod is working great? Or other reasons. I think there's other reasons. Maybe there's other reasons. And let me tell you, I don't think it's necessary. For an ad or for this egregious display of hatred and bigotry. Or for just telling it like it is, which is very upsetting to Dems, to certain Dems. All of which are considered Spam. All of those are Spam, but Flamebait, Troll and Offtopic are all different. Honestly, I get a lot, a lot of Spam mods. Amazed that a lot got removed! But maybe it's not necessary for the site. 🇺🇸
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @05:06PM
That is the goal of this spam, to drive away people the troll doesn't like. Probably one of the ACs that routinely get modded down as troll/spam for over-posting their nonsense and this is their revenge. Petty actions by petty people. I also have pulled back from this site, but most every other place I've checked out is either way more of an echo chamber or suffers the from more of the same troll/spam garbage. The admins are pretty anti-censorship and prefer to let the community post. Just set your filters and do NOT read down modded posts, and if you do then don't complain simply because you didn't respect the -1 Troll / Flamebait / Spam mod.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday September 14 2017, @05:53PM (3 children)
Yeah, it's getting embarrassing.
I used to try and recommend this site to people but can't anymore.
I don't want it to reflect poorly on myself or to condone the nonsense that goes on in any thread that mentions a woman, for example.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Thursday September 14 2017, @07:05PM (2 children)
I used to try and recommend this site to people but can't anymore.
I don't want it to reflect poorly on myself
Exactly. In fact, I don't recommend *any* discussion site any more, except perhaps Reddit if they're looking for a very particular non-tech niche. I wouldn't recommend any tech news site, at all: they're all like this, full of insane right-wing rantings, anti-gay bigotry, religious idiocy, etc. It's weird, in my 20s I never realized that techies (esp. engineers) were highly correlated with religious nuts, but as I've gotten older I've definitely noticed it. I read an article about 9 years ago that talked about a high correlation between engineers and terrorists, pointing out that many Islamic terrorists came from an engineering background (Osama bin Laden was an engineer for instance). But it absolutely makes sense: there's not only a high degree of religiosity among engineers, but a very severe form of black-and-white thinking, which of course leads to extremism. It isn't far from there to being a terrorist.
So around my non-tech friends/family I may mention something I saw on a tech news site, but I won't name the site and certainly wouldn't recommend that they peruse it. They'd probably think I was some kind of extremist or bigot. You're right, these places are embarrassing; you'd think that a bunch of people who studied science in college would be generally scientific-thinking, but there's no shortage of climate change deniers and even Moon landing deniers and Creationists among engineers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @10:45PM
I'm pro-science, anti-religion, and yet I'm almost all those other things that you hate. I'll grant you the Moon landing.
MAGA
FYI about the climate change: It is certain that humans have some effect. The evidence that this effect is severe or undesirable is weak and tainted. Even if we were clearly causing ourselves severe troubles, ignoring the problem might be a rational choice. This is because the proposed solutions are expensive, not likely to be effective, and certain to be cheated on by other nations. If I wanted to make a dent in the problem, I'd start by nuking about 6 billion non-Americans in order to reduce demand for fossil fuel.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @10:46PM
And even worse, none of those crazy idiots are tolerant like us Superior Liberals! We need to purge them all in the spirit of togetherness and brotherhood. No longer will we sit idly by while crimethink runs rampant among the proles.