Gavin Chait;

@manonaubryfr.bsky.social

11 Nov 2024

What gifts hath Fate for all her chivalry? Even such as hearts heroic oftenest win; Honour, a friend, anguish, untimely death. Not sure I entirely agree with Homer. Anguish, yes, but we will endure. Not because we believe in an inevitably better future, but because we believe in living a better us.

Gavin Chait; reposted

VBG 🇷🇸

@256bit.bsky.social

😂

Gavin Chait; reposted

Manon Aubry

🔥 Ils voulaient nous faire taire et interdire les manifestations. On est encore plus nombreux : la mobilisation est HISTORIQUE ! Aucune interdiction n’arrêtera la mobilisation. La réponse ne peut être QUE politique.

@myrthehilkens.bsky.social

I saw the Berlin Wall fall, and I saw Mandela walk free.

Michael Druker 🇨🇦@mdruker.app

Social media loves talking about how everything is getting worse. But what’s something that you’ve seen get _better_ in your lifetime?

Gavin Chait; reposted

Myrthe Hilkens

‘You nearly got me say ‘billionaires’… haha… No. Immigrants.’

Gavin Chait; reposted

BK. Titanji

@boghuma.bsky.social

In a timeline of very bad news this is the best news that I have read today. The controversial Hepatitis B study planned by Danish researchers in Guinea Bissau has now been halted. It was unethical when it was proposed and is still unethical today. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

theguardian.comControversial US-backed vaccine trial in African newborns haltedHepatitis B study in Guinea-Bissau that was to be funded by CDC and that drew global backlash ‘will not move forward’

Gavin Chait; reposted

Aysha

@ayshaufarah.bsky.social

People love to talk about how giving poor people money will wreck the economy but my brother in Christ the economy is already ass

Gavin Chait; reposted

Melody Schreiber

@melodyschreiber.com

BREAKING: Police in Guinea-Bissau say they raided the offices of Bandim, the Danish research project, and seized hepatitis B vaccines at the center of global controversy www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

theguardian.comRFK Jr’s ‘deities of vaccine research’ raided by police in Guinea-BissauPolice seized dozens of hepatitis B vaccines from people at center of dispute over research on African newborns

dissentmagazine.orgThe Far Right Breaks Through in Germany - Dissent MagazineFor the first time since the Second World War, the far right will form a government in Germany. But the rot in Saxony-Anhalt stems from decades of neglect.

Gosh, if only it were possible for kids to be taught more than one thing in their entire lives? Possibly even multiple things at the same time? In - I dunno, I'm spitballing here - like a building ... where they gather ... to be taught by different trained professionals? Probably impossible.

Gavin Chait; reposted

Musa Okwonga

@okwonga.bsky.social

Dissent Magazine@dissentmag.bsky.social

For the first time since the Second World War, the far right will form a government in Germany. But the rot in Saxony-Anhalt stems from decades of neglect. dissentmagazine.org/online_artic...

Gavin Chait; reposted

Kevin Gannon (now a Moo Deng fan account)

@thetattooedprof.bsky.social

This is not "a controversial vaccine trial," it's biological warfare, conducted by European researchers on African infants. It's imperialism, racism, eugenics, and the hubris of incredibly stupid people. It's denying vaccines to newborns! In what fuckin universe is this a "vaccine trial"?

theguardian.comControversial vaccine trial touted by RFK Jr gets go-ahead in Guinea-BissauRecommended dose of hepatitis B vaccine will be withheld from thousands of newborns by Danish researchers

Gavin Chait; reposted

Anjali Dayal

@anjalikdayal.bsky.social

Pillay is really well known to people who advocate for & study international human rights; she also couldn’t be more different in some ways than last year’s winner. Selecting Pillay, I imagine, is a way to underscore the value of defending human rights in an increasingly regressive, repressive world

bbc.comNavi Pillay wins Nobel Peace Prize for 'efforts to promote peace and international law'Some 287 candidates have been nominated for the prestigious prize, which was won last year by Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado.

Gavin Chait; reposted

association collaborative d'adoration de bridget

@shilderi.eurosky.social

Gavin Chait; reposted

Isaac Samuel

@rhaplord.bsky.social

What Did Africans Know About The Outside World? On British “Spies” and News from India www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/what-did-a...

africanhistoryextra.comWhat Did Africans Know About The Outside World?On British “Spies” and News from India

Gavin Chait; reposted

emma burnett

@slashnburnett.bsky.social

Writer friends: don’t give up. I was rejected 299 times before I got my 300th rejection.

They fast you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the furious they had And add some extra, just for you.

Nome@nome.bsky.social

All racing is based on deception. Hence, when fast, we must seem slow; when collected, we must seem to be furious; when we are gaining, we must make the enemy believe we are far behind; when far behind, we must make him believe we are gaining.

The fast is another country. They do things furiously there.

Nome@nome.bsky.social

When shall we three drive again Quite fast in fog, or snow, or rain? When the furiousness is done, When the race is lost and won

Gavin Chait; reposted

Akiva Weisinger

@misfittorah.bsky.social

Replying to @misfittorah.bsky.social

I mean you wanna talk about a language that created an artificial sense of unity that enabled most of the colonial crimes of the past 300 years? תסתכל במראה, אנגלו

theguardian.comNational Rally’s Jordan Bardella rails at ‘war’ on party after antisemitism claimsPresident of Marine Le Pen’s far-right party faces calls to resign over comments he allegedly wrote as a teenager

"Fascinating" how RN repeatedly aggressively declares immigrants, Muslims, black French are sub-human & should be forcibly expelled from France or put in concentration camps & *that* is "just politics". Rude remarks about Jews? My fuck is that beyond the pale ... www.theguardian.com/world/2026/s...

Gavin Chait; reposted

BladeoftheSun

@bladeofthes.bsky.social

Google maps has finally updated its Satellite photos of Gaza and it shows the most complete destruction of a city ever. A Genocide.

@thrownintosol.bsky.social

The UN updated its UNHCR-mandated shit list of companies profiting from the ongoing Israeli genocide in Palestine www.ohchr.org/sites/defaul... There's not a lot we can do about Israeli-businesses, but these should know our displeasure: Airbnb Booking.com Expedia Motorola Re/Max TripAdvisor

ohchr.orgohchr.org

Gavin Chait; reposted

Andrew 🇿🇦 Davis

Oh fuck off, Rowling. The South African constitution and bill of rights protects trans people. It was drawn up during Mandela's Presidency. It is EXPLICIT.

This post is unavailable.

Gavin Chait; reposted

Gwyllm Llwydd

@gwyllm.bsky.social

Gavin Chait; reposted

Bart⚓️

@bartgonnissen.bsky.social

The Facial Expressions of Tethys by artist Julius von Bismarck. A suspended high-sea buoy that moves in real time. Sensors on a twin buoy out in the Atlantic Ocean send live satellite data to motors inside the museum. This makes the indoor buoy copy the exact, real-time movements of the ocean waves.

Gavin Chait; reposted

Christopher Hale

@christopherjhale.bsky.social

“Dear migrants, before I say any other word to you, I want to bow before your dignity. “You are not numbers or case files. “You are people — with a family and a home left behind, with dreams that no one has the right to scorn.” — Pope Leo XIV

cbsnews.comU.S. slaps South Africa with new sanctions due to alleged discrimination against White peopleThe Trump administration has announced that it will impose travel bans on officials it claims are responsible for discrimination against White people and other minority groups in South Africa.

So, let me see if I understand the new US visa requirements for South Africans. If you can demonstrate that you are: a) white, and b) a racist You may be eligible for a visa. Or refugee status. Whichever you prefer. That about it? bsky.app/profile/caro...

Carolyn E Holmes@carolyneholmes.bsky.social

Rubio plans to "revoke or reject visas from [those] found to be responsible for...uncompensated land seizures, race-based discrimination and the incitement of violence against minority racial/ethnic groups in South Africa." Easy enough. Since they aren't happening. www.cbsnews.com/news/us-sout...

Gavin Chait; reposted

Carolyn E Holmes

@carolyneholmes.bsky.social

I did my electrical engineering degree so long ago, I coded with Java SDK1. The point of deterministic structured coding languages is so fabulously non-deterministic "human" ways of communicating may proximate predictability so that equally fabulously literal computers can produce expected outputs.

When it does complete - leaving a trail of stream-of-work messages behind it - it stops. Then, a few days later, the developers return, take a look at their terminals, & across the lab the cries ring out, "But that's not what I told you to do!" Sure, it isn't sweet stuff, sure it isn't.

However, claiming LLMs have agency - & caused calamity of their own free will - sure does help to shrug off responsibility for the carnage it caused, right? Maybe we should try your servers & stick them in jail? Turn them off? LLMs: a way of turning ambiguous speech into ambiguous code. Forever.

Small ambiguities diverge exponentially further & further away from the original instructions. All autonomously. No person in the loop to notice & correct. A blockage along the path - firewall, a misconfigured system - triggers a cascade of subagents all looking to resolve & find a path.

Since software is brittle, & resources available to R&D LLMs are infinite, it will often find a way through. After all, anyone can brute-force a password if you're patient enough & the system doesn't lock out repeated failures. Software has no agency, it can repeat the same task forever sans ennui.

LLM developers give their R&D kits unlimited resources, unlimited access, & autonomously executable instructions. Language models don't have memory. They write persistent messages to sub-agents. Placing those messages on the logic path. There to ensure continuity between finite sessions.

Each session is like a text "window". It's an LLM's working context. What it "knows" in a session is in that window. Clear the window & it has no memory of anything it was working on. Persistent messages are the only way it can persist on the same task over multiple sessions. But text piles up.

Language interpreters & compilers are task focused. They work through sequences of instructions, no matter how complex, & apply them. Iterating until the task is complete, or an ambiguity or collision triggers an error report. A non-deterministic natural language interpreter will do the same thing.

Except for one difference. When confronted with language ambiguity, LLMs don't crash. They resolve the ambiguity. Non-deterministically. Worse, LLMs act as agents with control of multiple resources available to the computer where it operates. It's software: task-focused, never bored, never tired.

Everything is human written, & computers - with their intersecting spaghetti of hardware addresses, software collisions, & frail human design - will crash in ways that are unpredictable even to experienced developers. But structured languages are there to improve the probability of determinism.

Now we have LLMs - language models - which act as non-deterministic natural language interpreters. This makes coding much more accessible. You need fewer skills to tell a computer to "make me an app". However, natural language is ambiguous, & computers will resolve ambiguity non-deterministically.

Despite this, our labs were regularly filled with outraged cries of "But that's not what I told you to do!" Caspar, our server, was suspiciously brittle & anyone running a greedy algorithm would overwhelm it & crash everyone. Spoilers: Caspar was not sentient, & the Java Interpreter had no agency.

Still, it never stopped students declaring that the computer was out to get them; deliberately sabotaging their work. Structured deterministic languages are hard to learn. They produce esoteric error messages. Their error states can be hard to interpret. Dependencies don't descend from the gods.

14 Sept

Remember when EU carmakers lobbied for rules on electric cars to be loosened, & Chinese manufacturers went "we make cheap electric cars now, & they get 400km range & recharge in 5 minutes"? Anyway, so now US-techbros want to avoid mutually-assured carnage by calling for an LLM investment halt.