Which is a tragedy. Many reasons pertaining to why that is the exception.

You can still fake it. Have AI write the essay, you “write” a first draft and simulate edits here and there. You can also prompt AI to writer a first, second, and third draft and detail changes. Then you manually make them over time. Turn it in.

Look, this is a chance for teaching and grading to change. It needs to as the traditional methods which were failing from budget cuts, overuse of shit tools, etc, weren’t working. Put learning, not evaluation, in the classroom and you can avoid AI abuse. I am an N of 1, but I’m telling you there are teachers out there who are amazing because they approach teaching without regurgitation and grade based progress. AI thrives at both.

Go grab Frier, read pedagogy of the oppressed, and then start researching contract grading.

In my in person classes I used contract grading and weighed in class participation and case studies at 75% of their contract. The final was optional and was from a list of possible choices. I’d focus on providing mentorship and feedback, not grading them, simulating real world growth and learning. I had no AI problems and both I and my students generally loved it.

I taught one online class. It sucked. I hated it. Rampant AI and totally fabricated everything. Even reflection paragraph posts. I need to learn how to design an online class like my in person ones. Until then, never again.

Most of the AI users were student athletes. I can quantify this, so I’m not exagerating. They would miss classes for travel, turn in AI slop, and I would have to fail them over and over. That online class was 60% student athletes. I tried so hard to talk sense and be accommodating, but it was unabashed AI everything. It was bad.

The student athletes are getting more screwed than normal because they are just faking it through college and getting exploited by the NCAA for money.

I read through all the comments and responses. @harfang@slrpnk.net you need to make slides quick and easy using drag and drop and font layouts. That’s why you use Canva from what I can tell. So getting hardcore image manipulation is not necessary, nor collaborative style programs.

You can, with minimal effort, use Libreoffice Impress. Its PowerPoint without the Microslop. What this requires is you find a good source for properly licensed fonts and images, places like Pixabay and such.

You can use GIMP if you want to, but it reads like you just need to learn to use the tools in Impress. Again, GIMP is basically a Photoshop replacement. I’m not sure you need that.

Here is my work flow I used to make pretty slides and lecture decks that rely on prompts and imagery for students, not death by text:

-Outline in Libreoffice Writer. -Search for images on Pixabay, Unsplash, or Wikimedia Commons. -Search for, or use incorporated, fonts. Two to three font faces. -Build a draft presentstion in Libreoffice Impress -Set it down, walk away for a bit. -Return and edit as needed.

I’m not sure if GIMP is an alternative if you’re looking for drag and drop?

I use Libre Impress for slides, unsplash/pixabay/wikimedia commons for high quality images.

Is there an alternative at this point? I tried Brave on a recommendation and its got AI integrated from default with opt out required.

That’s why Evernote went the way it did? Oh, that makes me sad. That was an incredible resource in grad school. OCR saved my ass on my PhD exams. Hand written notes, scanned at the library copier, organized and OCR. Immensely useful for a test (take home) that takes three days and covers two years of classes.

I stopped using it about 5 years ago because it just started to feel off. Little things not working or a UI change I didn’t like. Plus the pricing was restrictive in a way I couldn’t justify it anymore.

Considering reddit is corporate bot slop now, I’m impressed they haven’t done a Zuck and shut it down.

Can’t wait for it to turn its latest travesty Suicide Goodnight Moon into an ad for rope.

Quite. I fear what this loss of empathy will mean for humanity.

I’ll bite and share my experience. There is absolutely an issue. I’ve had applications for bank accounts denied, two people on hiring committees tell me I don’t belong here, a grant application simply withdrawn, another (confirmed insider knowledge) threw any application despite a valid work permit with any hint of US on the application into the trash. I have so many people ask me why I’m here, how I’m here, when I’m leaving. In professional settings and social. My partner, a entrepreneur, for the first time ever is having government entities stonewall her and representatives tell her off when she does any paperwork. She was in tears one day as she called to get some advice on a regulation and was told her business didn’t deserve advice. People. Are. Cruel. There is very little empathy left, and honestly, I get it. It’s not right, but I understand.

I want to integrate but there is absolutely an informal unwelcome mat being put in front of the door to Europe, and Canada.

I won’t be responding to posts as I am likely to get brigaded and trolled for writing the above. Americans wanting to get to safety, leave gun violence and fascism behind, and build a better world, are simply not welcome or have many barriers in place that didn’t exist before.

As a US researcher (social sciences) who left, I warned my EU colleagues not to go to our big conferences. They were floored. Many thought it wasn’t that bad, but the selling point that worked is, “do you want to risk being on the wrong side of an unaccountable border agent who hates how you look?” A gulag, literally a fucking gulag in a foreign country, could await. Its not worth the risk.

However, context. What I dont appreciate about these articles is that they assume a broad ban on the US because of morals, ethics, national pride, or solidarity. Nope. It’s risk. Hubris and prestige of a career trump all other things. That simple. These same researchers still go to Hungary and Turkey. Its really discouraging to me as a critical theorist.

You know, this makes sense. You are right.

I’m not a sudo apt master. I don’t know shit about terminal or making Linux do stuff beyond wanting to point and click. Yes, it can run a sea worthy version of Photoshop.

Let me break it down. I use a program called Lutris, installed from the software manager. Its technically a game launcher to collect all your games in one convenient area, letting me launch steam, gog, etc from one library. I install plenty of windows programs and obscure ones if I need them for my research. MaxQDA, SPSS for instance.

There are few, if any, normal day-to-day use cases where Windows is better. Gaming, thanks to Proton, is not a problem. Drivers? Got those too. But what about x software? There’s a less bloated FOSS or low cost version out there.

Just go for it.

The issue I have with the responses are that forking or running lite browsers is not a solution but a work around. A work around that requires vigilance in the rapidly changing tech space. Most people can’t do that. It won’t result in systematic change that we need to stop enshitification. I’m not downplaying your work and a counter movement, far from it, but its simply not enough without more resources to stop the deluge of nonsense.

I dont have answers, and there are too many challenges to count to list here. From politics to how business schools teach. So we are stuck with a domineering overlord with both the resources to make it all look simple and fluid and to make the work of innovators increasingly difficult.

Yeah. I’d even say we went beyond late stage capitalism. We are now on the cusp of a feudalistic society more akin to the corporate dominance in Blade Runner or Eve Online, maybe The Expanse, then anything resembling capitalism. Corporations are more powerful than nation states, many people are indentured to their workplace via healthcare needs or non competes, etc. So there’s that. This is an entirely new thread though so I’ll stop it there. TL;DR - This shit sucks.

Kevin, if thats even a real person at this point in media, is just pushing stories and discourse aligned with corporate speak. Let’s consider it less stupid and more complicit, which I argue, is even worse.

I bought an older Samsung and only use it for doom scrolling, 2FA, and podcasts. Its fine stripped down to nothingness. My next purchase, once the cracks from me dropping it spread, will be an older Pixel so I can run GraphineOS. I’m hopeful that like my Linux experience, it’ll extend the devices life given my use case. Like buying old laptops and kicking windows to the curb in favor of Linux buys you tons of time and product life.

I am not an economist. I am not an expert on anything consumer. It is, however, plainly obvious that companies are trying to squeeze blood from a stone at this point. They can’t make money anymore with pay to own and innovation like they used to for a variety of reasons. From greed to enshitification. If you look at it with a different view, everyone is poorer because they are greedy, they’ve ruined everyone’s lives but must make numbers go up. So they find new and terrifying ways of screwing you over for diminishing returns. Like this. Relying on turnover sales and nothing else.

Im going to start physical mailings and cold emails. I’m over this job market, its AI/ATS nonsense, and the people who think its OK.