#Computer literacy

[ecrivainsolitaire]

A summary of the Chinese AI situation, for the uninitiated.

These are scores on different tests that are designed to see how accurate a Large Language Model is in different areas of knowledge. As you know, OpenAI is partners with Microsoft, so these are the scores for ChatGPT and Copilot. DeepSeek is the Chinese model that got released a week ago. The rest are open source models, which means everyone is free to use them as they please, including the average Tumblr user. You can run them from the servers of the companies that made them for a subscription, or you can download them to install locally on your own computer. However, the computer requirements so far are so high that only a few people currently have the machines at home required to run it.

Yes, this is why AI uses so much electricity. As with any technology, the early models are highly inefficient. Think how a Ford T needed a long chimney to get rid of a ton of black smoke, which was unused petrol. Over the next hundred years combustion engines have become much more efficient, but they still waste a lot of energy, which is why we need to move towards renewable electricity and sustainable battery technology. But that's a topic for another day.

As you can see from the scores, are around the same accuracy. These tests are in constant evolution as well: as soon as they start becoming obsolete, new ones are released to adjust for a more complicated benchmark. The new models are trained using different machine learning techniques, and in theory, the goal is to make them faster and more efficient so they can operate with less power, much like modern cars use way less energy and produce far less pollution than the Ford T.

However, computing power requirements kept scaling up, so you're either tied to the subscription or forced to pay for a latest gen PC, which is why NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and all the other chip companies were investing hard on much more powerful GPUs and NPUs. For now all we need to know about those is that they're expensive, use a lot of electricity, and are required to operate the bots at superhuman speed (literally, all those clickbait posts about how AI was secretly 150 Indian men in a trenchcoat were nonsense).

Because the chip companies have been working hard on making big, bulky, powerful chips with massive fans that are up to the task, their stock value was skyrocketing, and because of that, everyone started to use AI as a marketing trend. See, marketing people are not smart, and they don't understand computers. Furthermore, marketing people think you're stupid, and because of their biased frame of reference, they think you're two snores short of brain-dead. The entire point of their existence is to turn tall tales into capital. So they don't know or care about what AI is or what it's useful for. They just saw Number Go Up for the AI companies and decided "AI is a magic cow we can milk forever". Sometimes it's not even AI, they just use old software and rebrand it, much like convection ovens became air fryers.

Well, now we're up to date. So what did DepSeek release that did a 9/11 on NVIDIA stock prices and popped the AI bubble?

Oh, I would not want to be an OpenAI investor right now either. A token is basically one Unicode character (it's more complicated than that but you can google that on your own time). That cost means you could input the entire works of Stephen King for under a dollar. Yes, including electricity costs. DeepSeek has jumped from a Ford T to a Subaru in terms of pollution and water use.

The issue here is not only input cost, though; all that data needs to be available live, in the RAM; this is why you need powerful, expensive chips in order to-

Holy shit.

I'm not going to detail all the numbers but I'm going to focus on the chip required: an RTX 3090. This is a gaming GPU that came out as the top of the line, the stuff South Korean LoL players buy…

Or they did, in September 2020. We're currently two generations ahead, on the RTX 5090.

What this is telling all those people who just sold their high-end gaming rig to be able to afford a machine that can run the latest ChatGPT locally, is that the person who bought it from them can run something basically just as powerful on their old one.

Which means that all those GPUs and NPUs that are being made, and all those deals Microsoft signed to have control of the AI market, have just lost a lot of their pulling power.

Well, I mean, the ChatGPT subscription is 20 bucks a month, surely the Chinese are charging a fortune for-

Oh. So it's free for everyone and you can use it or modify it however you want, no subscription, no unpayable electric bill, no handing Microsoft all of your private data, you can just run it on a relatively inexpensive PC. You could probably even run it on a phone in a couple years.

Oh, if only China had massive phone manufacturers that have a foot in the market everywhere except the US because the president had a tantrum eight years ago.

So… yeah, China just destabilised the global economy with a torrent file.

[melyzard]

Okay, look, they talk to a Google rep in some of the video clips, but I give it a pass because this FREE course is a good baseline for personal internet safety that so many people just do not seem to have anymore. It's done in short video clip and article format (the videos average about a minute and a half). This is some super basic stuff like "What is PII and why you shouldn't put it on your twitter" and "what is a phishing scam?" Or "what is the difference between HTTP and HTTPS and why do you care?"

It's worrying to me how many people I meet or see online who just do not know even these absolute basic things, who are at constant risk of being scammed or hacked and losing everything. People who barely know how to turn their own computers on because corporations have made everything a proprietary app or exclusive hardware option that you must pay constant fees just to use. Especially young, somewhat isolated people who have never known a different world and don't realize they are being conditioned to be metaphorical prey animals in the digital landscape.

Anyway, this isn't the best internet safety course but it's free and easy to access. Gotta start somewhere.

Here's another short, easy, free online course about personal cyber security (GCFGlobal.org Introduction to Internet Safety)

Bonus videos:

(Jul 13, 2023, runtime 15:29)

"He didn't have anything to hide, he didn't do anything wrong, anything illegal, and yet he was still punished."

(Apr 20, 2023; runtime 9:24 minutes)

"At least 60% use their name or date of birth as a password, and that's something you should never do."

(March 4, 2020, runtime 11:18 minutes)

"Crossing the road safely is a basic life skill that every parent teaches their kids. I believe that cyber skills are the 21st century equivalent of road safety in the 20th century."

[ahedderick]

Tech

Whoo. One of my friends has a son in his thirties who is an IT guy. He is between jobs right now, and I asked her if he could come over and help me with several computer tasks that I don't have the confidence to even start, nor would I have the trouble-shooting ability to finish them if I did. As in, someone could painstakingly write out all the steps to, say, installing Bitwarden . . I could follow steps 1 - 3 just fine . . in step four the directions will say "click on the button X" and my screen will have no button X. This happens every time I try to do an unfamiliar tech task. So. Professional help. We all need some sometimes.

I am hopeful that by end of day I will have learned a little and gotten my computer into a better state. Hopeful.

[ask-artsy-oncie]

Learning a little CSS and HTML are essential for a good online experience and I'm not kidding.

If you have an AO3 account

Go to your dashboard

Click on "skins"

Create a new skin or edit the one you currently use

Type this into the text field:

.blurb#work_xxxxxxxx,

.blurb.user-xxxxxxx {

display: none; }

Replace the "x"s with the work ID (found in the fic's URL) or the user ID (found in a user's profile)

Add new lines with a comma at the end of each line (excluding the lowest line) for every user or work you don't ever want to see again

Save your skin

Enjoy your new and improved AO3 experience and stop harassing authors for creating things you don't want to see.

[rubyroboticalt]

i designed a flag/symbol for the right to repair movement because i believe it is Bull Shit that i cant repair my own phone without special tools. rights and use for making sellable stuff below the cut

feel free to use for online posters and homemade patches and stuff. i have a shop with stickers and printed shirts if u want to buy, i get $1.50 per sale so most of the cost covers the production. itll be in the replies, as the only reply probably.

id prefer if mass printed stuff thru like. teespring and redbubble was avoided as i have a shop thru that myself, but im not gonna enforce it. colors were inspired from teh communist flag ffs. its just if u wanna support me.

[subroutine-fic]

"TRON: Ares will feature characters going into the real world"

Tron's biggest issue aside from Disney's horrendous timing (for anniversaries or reboots) and inability to actually promote the IP, is that computers and the very concept of the internet are no longer the mysteries they once were back in the 80s and 90s.

Where TRON failed to capitalize on a very young audience's curiosity about the internet (and technology), things like ReBoot and other series like Digimon, Batman Beyond, and Code Lyoko, occupied that space to different degrees.

(I think TRON 2.0. was in a place to capitalize on my demographic, but the lack of promotion and prerequisite of having to watch the original film was probably a bigger barrier to entry than desirable in the 2000s. Being an FPS probably didn't help either given the era was more third-person or platform-geared.)

I think the growing computer and internet literacy issue hitting later generations rn (intentionally manufactured by tech companies) is something I think a TRON story could use to its advantage. Ain't nobody thinking that deeply, though.

Digital characters entering the real world was always an idea I thought shattered the suspension of disbelief for an already out-there concept. That TRON: Legacy never actually got the chance to execute that goofiness was a blessing in disguise.

Alas, Disney's obsession with pushing IP in directions that don't suit it remains steadfast.

[nerdsagainsthumanity]

[titleknown]

...You know, it says a lot that we haven't seen much moral panic over how smartphones seem to be leading to widespread computer illiteracy amongst the yonger generations, given that (at least from what I've been seeing) that's actually true.

Maybe that's a social fear we should push on a little harder, if only so we can fucking do something about it.

Like, at the very least we should start actively shaming boomer parents (who can afford it) that treat an Iphone as a substitute for a decent laptop/desktop, and making actual resources for teaching kids how to use real-ass computers instead of Android/Iphone bullshit...

[backofthebookshelf]

I've reblogged a bunch of posts about computer literacy lately, and it got me thinking - would there be any interest in a series of posts to bridge the gap between 90s style computer classes and programming 101, from an elder millennial tech support person? This is honestly my favorite kind of thing and I'm already actively suppressing the desire to go through reblogs and answer the implicit questions in tags

[schoolofpracticalskills]

I think now is a good time to offer up some reminders for good internet safety. In the 90s and 00s, every kid going online for the first time was subjected to this talk, and it genuinely worries me how many younger folks today give out this kind of information completely unprompted.

You do not need to give your real legal name, even if it is just your first name

You do not need to share your real, exact age

You do not need to share your gender identity or sexual orientation

You do not need to share your race, ethnicity, or religious affiliations

You do not need to share your medical diagnoses and disabilities

You should never share your address or even the city you reside in

You SHOULD be using a VPN if you can.

If someone tries to pressure you into sharing any of these things, they are not your friend. A friend would respect your privacy.

These details are PRIVATE, PERSONAL information. They can be used to identify you. People that you follow or even hang out with online are strangers. Even people you like.

You are not immune to being scammed. There are bad actors out there who can and will take advantage of you wanting to be open and friendly. And in today's political climate, there are a lot of vulnerable people who are being targeted. Think carefully about your privacy and what personal information you share online.

[sniffanimal]

If you want you can put your general age/if you had typing classes/etc nuance in the tags too. I'm curious what the actual level of typing ability is on this site.

And I want to say there's no shame in not being able to type fast! It's not really a skill that is taught anymore, and it isn't one most people probably use in their day to day life unless you work in a field that requires it, or are a student. I write lots of emails for work, write stories as a hobby, and take minutes/notes in meetings for my union, so I've gotten very good at typing. I also used to be a closed caption writer.

You can use websites like Typing Club (idk if there's a free version of it), or even abandonware software and games to help you get better at typing, if you so desire. Also just practicing! When I was in school, when I beat the software we were using in typing class, I just copied passages out of books and stuff and timed myself.

[thatscarletflycatcher]

The following categories are not exhaustive; they are written only to give you an idea:

*Basically computer literate: I understand the difference between what is in my computer and what is in the cloud, can operate the basic functions of Word/Excel/Power Point (or their non-Mycrosoft equivalents), can type with more than two fingers, know at least two keyboard shortcuts, know how to organize folders, and manage right click options, can learn my way around a program by trial and error.

**Computer fluent: I can operate most/all the elements of an office package. I have taken more than one college-level computer science related course. I can do basic HTML coding. I can find creative solutions to problems by using more than one program in combination. I know what a command line is and know a handful of basic commands.

***Computer proficient: I am a professional in the IT field or could be. I can "do code", and know several programming languages, and can make a program if I want. I am knowledgeable about how the innards both software and hardware work.

[delcat177]

I forgot to set VLC as my default video program after updating, and Microsoft Media is apparently now charging $1 a pop for codec packs

and by God, there are people paying it, aren't there

ETA: VideoLan is a nonprofit and VLC media player is totally free. It works with every file format I've ever tangled with, and immediately played back the file with no difficulty. Get dinked Microsoft

[blind3dbylight]

My issues with the userbase at large aside, if you are genuinely interested in, and are able to install, Linux and want to learn it, I suggest starting with either Ubuntu or Linux Mint.

Mint is designed to be familiar to users coming off Windows or macOS, while Ubuntu is designed to be just different enough to encourage learning. Both are considered the most beginner-friendly distros and are perfect for someone just starting out with Linux. (I tortured myself by learning some Linux on Debian.)

And bear in mind that things are not always going to work right off. You will frequently need to do some legwork to get things working and configured. You will have to learn to use the terminal. You will have to do a lot of tinkering. And sometimes, what you’re trying to do just won’t go.

But do not let the insular userbase scare you off. Don’t let the people who scream “RTFM” intimidate you. There are plenty of resources and people willing to help out a newcomer to Linux and FOSS in general. I’m not a great resource on it (I’m primarily a Mac user) but they are out there.

[paradoxcase]

Because I have no idea what Gen Z kids mean when they say "download":

Please reblog, I want actual Gen Z people to answer this, which means it has to leave my corner of tumblr

If you picked the last option, please leave a comment or a tag with what you think "download" means, because I honestly have no idea what it could be

For bonus points, please specify if you think "upload" and "install" mean different things than "download" or if they are all just different words for the same thing in your idiolect

[weisscoldglare]

Can you remake the scene of the ROTTMNT movie with Weiss as Donnie and Blake as Mikey. The scene is where Donnie hacks the kraang ship with his hands. (I really hope you know what I'm talking about because I don't have a link)

im so sorry i have no idea, when i looked it up all I got was Soft Shell Donnie hooking up to the ship. Pretty sure that's not what you meant. But have Blake witnessing Weiss's Techi time.