Eda Tang’s excellent piece revealing that New Zealand Chinese Language Week receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Chinese Communist Party came out last week, but unfortunately illness kept me from blogging about it properly. It was to have been my final post for September. Many of us suspected this from the start, […]
Tag: language
A celebration of Chinese languages by The Post
I take my hat off to Eda Tang of The Post (formerly The Dominion Post) for highlighting six Chinese New Zealanders and our reo tūpuna (ancestral languages). As many of us said last year (and for many years prior) during “Chinese Language Week” (NZCLW), it’s not all about Mandarin, a relatively new tongue that […]
Read More… from A celebration of Chinese languages by The Post
Lucire unplugs from OnlyKlans, and we find more Wikiality
I guess whomever wrote this in Wikipedia is being helpful, but the second pronunciation shown is not how you pronounce Lucire. It may be how you pronounce lucire, the quaint Romanian word, in Romanian, but it’s not the pronunciation of the magazine’s name. Maybe the Lucire Romania crew adopted this pronunciation when dealing with […]
Read More… from Lucire unplugs from OnlyKlans, and we find more Wikiality
You can’t contract yourself out of breaking the law, Google—that’s not how it works
Google has updated its privacy policy, giving itself carte blanche to take publicly available data to use for its large language models and “AI”. I don’t think whomever wrote the update has any comprehension of the law. Or that they do, but think they can get away with it. Maybe in their own country they […]
Read More… from You can’t contract yourself out of breaking the law, Google—that’s not how it works
Where do we draw the line on LLM- or “AI”-generated content?
Contrary to my earlier post, I allowed the trackbacks from AI-Summary.com after its owner reached out to me. The fact he reached out does show he read the post, and there was some human agency involved. That very courteous email even offered to remove this blog from further mining. When you know a human’s there, […]
Read More… from Where do we draw the line on LLM- or “AI”-generated content?
ChatGPT and other ‘AI’ aren’t that mysterious, after all
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has one of the clearest stories explaining ‘AI’, the misnomer used to describe the likes of Bing AI and ChatGPT (which, I understand, is French: Chat, j’ai pété translates to ‘Cat, I farted’). Vaughan-Nichols explains that LLMs (large language models) simply rely on statistics, which is why they get things factually wrong. […]
Read More… from ChatGPT and other ‘AI’ aren’t that mysterious, after all
Lucire at 25: how things have changed
The below was originally posted in Lucire. We have made it to 25 years of age there, and rather than reinvent the wheel, this little piece—as well as the one I uploaded yesterday hours after we turned exactly 25—reflect how I feel upon reaching this milestone. Olivia Macklin, photographed by Josh Fogel, make-up by […]
China in 2022: speak Cantonese, get banned from social media
If you think some of us were being uppity about New Zealand Chinese Language Week, how’s this for a real-life report? Speak Cantonese, get banned from a social media platform. That’s what’s happening in China right now. And I had already mentioned schoolchildren being told off for using their reo. The Google Translate translation is […]
Read More… from China in 2022: speak Cantonese, get banned from social media
New Zealand Chinese Language Week reviewed—in Cantonese
My friend Bevan was going to make a podcast in Cantonese for New Zealand Chinese Language Week, and I decided I would record a few tidbits—except it wound up being something far longer and a podcast episode in its own right. So here it is, all 13-plus minutes of it. If this isn’t your language, […]
Read More… from New Zealand Chinese Language Week reviewed—in Cantonese
The Detail on New Zealand Chinese Language Week
Thank you, Alexia Russell and Radio New Zealand, for giving voice to our concerns about New Zealand Chinese Language Week. You can listen to the episode of The Detail here. As they tagged Jo (chair of the NZCLW Trust), I decided I would get in touch via Twitter reply. This also addresses one of the […]
Read More… from The Detail on New Zealand Chinese Language Week