Scott Boehmer

Author: Scott Boehmer

  • Star League at 1,000

    Back in 2021, I was one of the founding moderators for a new BattleTech fan server. At the time, the big existing fan communities for the game tended to allow open bigotry and other unwelcoming behavior, and there wasn’t really much in the way of an alternative. After finding each other on twitter, three of us decided to set up a new server with the goal of being a welcoming place, particularly for LGBTQ fans.

    It’s been four years now, and the server recently hit 1,000 members. Over the years, it has grown into a great fan community. There have been growing pains along the way, and all three of us founding members have stepped away from moderation over the years – it’s a lot of work to keep a big community running smoothly, and we’ve moved on to other projects. I am really proud of what I helped build there though, and I look forward to seeing it continue to thrive.

    If you’re interested in BattleTech, here’s a link to the server: Star League.

  • AI, Search, and the Internet

    I wish I could say this is not a sustainable model for the internet, but honestly there’s no indication in Pew’s research that people understand how faulty the technology that powers Google’s AI Overview is, or how it is quietly devastating the entire human online information economy that they want and need, even if they don’t realize it.

    Emanuel Maiberg

    Google’s AI Is Destroying Search, the Internet, and Your Brain (404 Media)

  • Liberal Dissents

    But look closer at the dissents, and it is evident that, whatever their differences, the three liberals agree on an overarching theme: They no longer see the Court playing by the old game of constitutional law. Their dissents suggest anything but an assumption of business as usual. The three liberal justices are writing about a majority unbound by law and its tiresome technicalities—about a majority that is no longer doing law as that term has come to be understood.

    Aziz Huq

    The Court’s Liberals Are Trying to Tell Americans Something (The Atlantic)

  • Chatting into Dark Corners

    This is the sort of thing that should come as no surprise. Of course an LLM that ingests as much of the internet as possible is going to incorporate works of fiction, and these programs don’t have any way of separating fact from fiction. Then the chat interface and marketing are built to convince users that they’re chatting with an intelligence rather than a probability-based text generator. Despite all that, it is still a compelling example of the dangers of LLM chatbots.

    Social media users were quick to note that ChatGPT’s answer to Lewis’ queries takes a strikingly similar form to SCP Foundation articles, a Wikipedia-style database of fictional horror stories created by users online.

    “Entry ID: #RZ-43.112-KAPPA, Access Level: ████ (Sealed Classification Confirmed),” the chatbot nonsensically declares in one of his screenshots, in the typical writing style of SCP fiction. “Involved Actor Designation: ‘Mirrorthread,’ Type: Non-institutional semantic actor (unbound linguistic process; non-physical entity).”

    Another screenshot suggests “containment measures” Lewis might take — a key narrative device of SCP fiction writing. In sum, one theory is that ChatGPT, which was trained on huge amounts of text sourced online, digested large amounts of SCP fiction during its creation and is now parroting it back to Lewis in a way that has led him to a dark place.

    In his posts, Lewis claims he’s long relied on ChatGPT in his search for the truth.

    Joe Wilkins

    A Prominent OpenAI Investor Appears to Be Suffering a ChatGPT-Related Mental Health Crisis, His Peers Say (Futurism)

  • HTML Quine

    I saw this page shared on Mastodon, and it is an impressive showcase of some things that HTML and CSS can accomplish.

    Its title also meant that I had to look up what quine means:

    quine: A program that produces its own source code as output

    Wiktionary

    This page is a truly naked, brutalist html quine. (secretgeek.github.io)

  • WTF Just Happened Today

    WTF Just Happened Today is a newsletter from Matt Kiser that gives an overview of political news. It is sent out four times a week. Each one starts with “Today in one sentence”, which only works thanks to a generous application of semi-colons, and then gives more details on each bit of that overview. This structure is nice because you can read the quick summary and then jump to the details for any parts that catch your attention from it.

    You can read past newsletters and subscribe at whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com

  • Another ICE Story

    He had planned to return to Ireland in December, but was briefly unable to fly due to a health issue, his medical records show. He was only three days overdue to leave the US when an encounter with police landed him in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) custody.

    From there, what should have been a minor incident became a nightmarish ordeal: he was detained by Ice in three different facilities, ultimately spending roughly 100 days behind bars with little understanding of why he was being held – or when he’d get out.

    Sam Levin

    Irish tourist jailed by Ice for months after overstaying US visit by three days: ‘Nobody is safe’ (The Guardian)

  • The OBBB and North Carolina

    The OBBB contains provisions that will harm millions of North Carolinians and numerous sectors of our economy. While the effects of this bill were enough to lead Senator Tillis to flip (and now retire), every House Republican voted for this bill. Often, we view what goes on in Washington as detached from our lives here at home, but the effects of this bill will be felt at kitchen tables, in hospitals, and bank accounts all across the state. It’s on us to make sure that the lawmakers who voted for it, including every House Republican from North Carolina, feel what we feel, too.

    Miles Kirkpatrick

    One Big Beautiful Bill, One Big Blow to North Carolina (Carolina Forward)

  • Does Giving Money for Housing Work?

    Governments around the world have tried it: giving people cash to make housing more affordable. But does it actually work? We dive into one of the most misunderstood dynamics in housing economics — and reveal the single factor that determines whether cash assistance helps homebuyers… or just fuels even higher prices.

    Justine Underhill

    They Tried Giving People Money to Buy Homes – Here’s What Happened (Justine Underhill – YouTube)

  • BS Machines Broken By BS

    You can trick AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini into teaching you how to make a bomb or hack an ATM if you make the question complicated, full of academic jargon, and cite sources that do not exist.

    Aedrian Salazar

    Researchers Jailbreak AI by Flooding It With Bullshit Jargon (404 Media)