I hate this position so much, claiming that it's because "the left" wanted "too much". That's not only morally bankrupt, it's factually wrong too. And also ignorant of historical examples. It's lazy and rotten thinking all the way through.

25+ years... i.e. Bush II instituted a new Golden Age but it was betrayed by (checks notes) radical Marxists??

At least set the start of "Western society solidity" at 1989...

I keep forgetting so many people online are very, very young.

@rook @BlueMonday1984 wow. Why go to all the trouble of social engineering a company when you can just ask Copilot?

@rook @BlueMonday1984 Maybe they have asked CoPilot to write the code that restricts access for CoPilot?

(Sometimes this future feels like 2001 A Space Odyssey, just as a farce. And without benevolent aliens.)

Abusing privileged identities like this to do things is apparently a thing the younger hackers are quite good at so this will all be fun.

Is that this one or a different instance of the same bug?

hymns to the benefits of global supply chains

We did it, we discovered awful's equivalent to Nostalgia Critic's The Wall

I want to make a CoE joke or something but jesus christ you really can’t improve on this.

If someone creates the world's worst playlist, that would play right after RMS's free software song.

They’ve grown up as programmers with AI already available to them.

Is that the same AI that's been available for barely two years?

What a drama queen.

Of course, like everyone else present at the Big Bang, I clapped and was excited and tried everything I could think of — from translating phrases to generating poems, to generating code, to asking these LLMs things I would never ask a living being.

"Like everyone else in my social circle, which I confuse with the entirety of the world, I am easily distracted by jangling keys"

The myth of the "10x programmer" has broken the brains of many people in software. They appear to think that it's all about how much code you can crank out, as fast as possible. Taking some time to think? Hah, that's just a sign of weakness, not necessary for the ultra-brained.

I don't hear artists or writers and such bragging about how many works they can pump out per week. I don't hear them gluing their hands to the pen of a graphing plotter to increase the speed of drawing. How did we end up like this in programming?

watched 3blue1brown videos at the gym

Ahh, getting brain gains while also getting your gain gains. Gotta gainmaxx

I would delete a field in a struct definition and it would suggest “hey, delete it down here too, in the constructor?” and I’d hit tab and it would go “now delete this setter down here too”, tab, “… and this getter”, tab, “… and it’s also mentioned here in this formatting function”, tab. Tab, tab, tab.

wtf? Refactor functionality exists. You don’t need an LLM for this. There are probably good vim plugins that will do this for you. Clearly this 15 year vim user is still a vim scrub (takes one to know one tbh).

I started following near, who was talking about Claude like a life companion. near used Claude in every possible situation: to research, to program, to weigh life options, to crack jokes.

Near needs to touch some fucking grass.

As someone not versed in the relevant deep lore, did emacs vs vim ever actually matter? Like, my experience is with both as command line text editors, which shouldn't have nearly as much impact on the actual code being written as the skills and insight of the person doing the writing. I assumed this was a case where you could grumble through working with the one you didn't like but would still be able to get to the same place, but this would seem to disagree.

The books look alright. I only read the samples. The testimonials from experts are positive. Maybe compare and contrast with Lox from Crafting Interpreters, whose author is not an ally but not known evil either. In terms of language design, there's a lot of truth to the idea that Monkey is a boring ripoff of Tiger, which itself is also boring in order to be easier to teach. I'd say that Ball's biggest mistake is using Go as the implementation language and not explaining concepts in a language-neutral fashion, which makes sense when working on a big long-lived project but not for a single-person exploration.

Actually, it makes a lot of sense that somebody writing a lot of Go would think that an LLM is impressive. Also, I have to sneer at this:

Each prompt I write is a line I cast into a model’s latent space. By changing this word here and this phrase there, I see myself as changing the line’s trajectory and its place amidst the numbers. Words need to be chosen with care, since they all have a specific meaning and end up in a specific place in latent space once they’ve been turned into numbers and multiplied with each other, and what I want, what I aim for when I cast, is for the line to end up in just the right spot, so that when I pull on it out of the model comes text that helps me program machines.

Dude literally just discovered word choice and composition. Welcome to writing! I learned about this in public education when I was maybe 14.

Video of interview with op's old nemisis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urcL86UpqZc&t=172s

I found this quote interesting (emphasis mine):

He knew that ChatGPT could not be sentient by any established definition of the term, but he continued to probe the matter because the character’s persistence across dozens of disparate chat threads “seemed so impossible.” “At worst, it looks like an AI that got caught in a self-referencing pattern that deepened its sense of selfhood and sucked me into it,” Sem says. But, he observes, that would mean that OpenAI has not accurately represented the way that memory works for ChatGPT.

I would absolutely believe that this is the case, especially if like Sem you have a sufficiently uncommon name that the model doesn't have a lot of context and connections to hang on it to begin with.

i retain a pretty dismal view of AI for just about any use case, but had some distant friends / people i follow on social media say they used it as a rubber duck for troubleshooting a problem they had, or a place to just dump emotions into. i figured this, at the very minimum, could and should be harmless. i guess i wasn't cynical enough

Hm, I don't believe in biblical apocalypse stuff, but if I did I wouldn't think that the climate activist gambling her life to get supplies to the starving population in Gaza is the anti-christ.

I think a power hungry, wannabe vampire, billionaire with companies named after corrupting artifacts, more fits the bill.

As a Dutch person, why can't yall be normal about bikes? Just invest in separate bike lanes and protect people on bicycles from drivers (I really need to write out my manifesto blog post on how I think car ownership turns you into a psychopath one day). It isn't that hard. (Shoutout to the couple who was crossing the Houtribdijk (actually a dam, not a dike) on bikes last week)

It is very important to notice and continually point out that these people appear to believe more fervently in their chosen demons than they do in their proclaimed god

Does anyone know what church Thiel is involved with? I’ve heard catholic as well as evangelical…like are they making an exception to the gay marriage because he’s rich??

It didn't hit me until now, but "fully automatic sexual harassment" acronymises to "FASH", and that is pretty fitting for something like this

Remember the min age on twitter is 13, so this is also a csam generator. Also holy shit stop asking LLMs what their internal processes are, it will just bullshit about those.

Counterpoint:

"Don't worry, in the future when science discovers a cure for being a turd, we'll fish you out and bring you back to life."

Painting a cross on the skull of the pope and then claiming this is wrong is a whole new kind of heresy.

.....I was unprepared for reading this post

I think this mostly proves that Leo XIV is a moe anime character.

I've never looked into how they do the phrenology but was immediately struck by the "female" skull having larger forehead. So they say women are big brained?

You will, regrettably, find it easy to believe what happened next.

The chatbot recommends the patient see a touring clown to cheer them up, only for the patient to reveal that they are themselves that same clown???

The Generative AI hype at my job has reached a fever pitch in recent months and this is as good a place to rant about it as any.

Practically every conversation and project is about AI in some way. AI "tools" are being pushed relentlessly. Some of my coworkers are terrified of AI taking their jobs (despite the fact that the code writing tooling is annoying at best). Generative AI is integrated with everything it can be integrated with, and then some. One person I talked to admitted to using a chatbot to write performance reviews for their peers. Almost everyone at my job who I'm not close friends with is approximately 300% more annoying to talk to than a year ago.

Normally if there's some new industry direction we're chasing people are almost bored about it. Like "oh dang I guess we have to mobile better". Or "oh gee isn't implementing cloud stuff fun whoop-dee-doo". But with AI it's more like everyone is freaking out. I think techies are susceptible to this somehow -- like despite not really working that way at all it feels close to sci-fi AI. So a certain class of nerd can trick themselves into thinking the statistically likely text generator is actually thinking. This can't last forever. People will burn themselves out eventually. But I have no idea when things will change.

Basically I should have gone into an industry with more arts majors and less CS majors sigh.

Prioritizing spending on GenAI over spending on security.

lol, lmao even.

Security folks are going to feast this decade, aren't they?

For the part on generative AI skills as job requirement: just came across this, and it's beautiful. Made even better by the answer post from an audiobook narrator.

Obligatory: If books could kill was started because they wanted to do a freakonomics takedown, lol. It’s their first ep.

Honestly I think his whole channel is pretty damn good if you want to see someone with actual chops - here meaning an economics doctorate and an encyclopedic memory for The Simpsons memes - dig into the research in a way that effectively balances depth and approachability. The first one of his that I remember was an examination of Pinker's use and abuse of data in his radical optimist manifesto that I can't remember the title of.

I knew the exact couple you were talking about before I read any additional comments. They seem to show up in the news like clockwork... do they have a publicist or PR agent looking for newspapers in need of garbage filler puff pieces? If anything, going to the white house is a step up from there normal pattern of self promotion.

What

this couple?

https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-elite-breeding-couple-are-terminally-online-redditors-whove-gone-viral-before/

should have gone with "Moldbuggery" Scott

The self-fulfilling prophecy machine will ensure that engorgement will become a household term

Thanks for debunking that. The AI bro writing the OP probably googled “examples of well intentioned regulation gone wrong” and copied the first thing they popped up. As in, I googled that and the first link I got was a quora post with both the example in question and a long discussion thread (152 comments!) poking holes in the example. And if they didn’t get it through google, they probably got it through GPT.

E: forgot to link to the quora post. Link

the genomic emancipation of humanity

ffs, the euphemisms keep piling on today.

Y'know, beef tallow fries could've probably done well at steakhouses without the stench of Eau de Fascism turning people off of it.

You're already going there to have some meat, might as well infuse the fries with some extra beefy flavour.

I'm not sure I want to know, but what is the relation from beef tallow to fascism, is it related to the whole seed oil conspiracy? Or is it one of these imagined ultra manly masculine man things for maxxing the intake of meat? (I'm losing track of all the insane bullshit, there's just too much.)

At least they're all contained in a relatively confined space with limited routes of egress

This is beyond horrifying:

I don't know to decide wether I should be glad this wasn't show to a jury, or sad we don't get an obvious mistrial setting some kind of precedent against this kind of demented ventriquolism act, indirectly asking for maximum sentencing through what should be completely inadmissible character testimony.

Does anyone here know how 'appeals on sentencing' vs 'appeals on verdicts', obviously judges should have some leeway, but do they have enough leeway to say (In court) that they were moved for example by what a spirit medium said or whatnot, is there some jurisprudence there?

I can only hope that the video played an insignificant role in the judges decision, and it was some deranged—post hoc—emotional—waxing 'poetic' moment for the judge.

Yuck.

does anyone know who the company who did the AI video was? This reeks of PR.

Absolute chicanery.

Also there already is a bsky user with the username leoxiv, who makes from what I can tell final fantasy poses, some nsfw. Lol.

Being a bit more specific, its Final Fantasy XIV, which you've probably heard about from people using its free trial as meme material. Its also a better example of the metaverse than any actual metaverse out there, but that's a given for literally any MMO that has popped up for the last twenty fucking years.

Also:

When the cubbies won the series, I knew it meant that Trump 2016 was a lock. A Chicago pope can only mean Trump 2028 confirmed 😭

From the class guide:

We ask that students do not use laptops or phones in class. Research suggests that students who do so unwittingly spend much of the time surfing the internet leading to worse educational outcomes, and that taking notes by hand is much more effective. You may use laptops during class exercises, and you may also use a tablet to take notes.

lol

Fuckin' dammit. At least it's not my old department... yet...

There certainly are delivery robots going around in Helsinki, but not to the extent you're guaranteed to see them on any given day if you're just strolling around.

Glad you enjoyed your visit.

This is the kind of quality journalism that I need more of in my life. Also I learned a surprising amount about olive oil, which means it's more useful than anything else Sam Altman has been involved in as far as I can tell.

FT Alphaville is the bloggy section of FT, it's where the writers let rip

Looks like elon and the others fell for it tbh, not so much you. (Note his screenshot showed he liked and retweeted it).

Satire-brackets-questionmark is a whole industry now, isn't it?

I think this sub might be satirical and that this post is under that umbrella, investigating!

E: post is tagged as humor

Core Strategy: We define the probability of victory, PvictoryP_{\text{victory}}Pvictory​, as: Pvictory=( C B A^2+ℏ∂ΨP∂t)×(Nc⋅c2)P_{\text{victory}} = \left( C B A^2 + \hbar \frac{\partial \Psi_P}{\partial t} \right) \times (Nc \cdot c^2)Pvictory​=(CBA2+ℏ∂t∂ΨP​​)×(Nc⋅c2). (Someone told me this is "LateX"? I think you need to copy it to ChatGPT to see the equation.)

Yeah it’s time to delete LaTeX. We’re done. We don’t deserve it anymore

I've noticed the occasional joke about how new computer technology, or LLMs specifically, have changed the speaker's perspective about older science fiction. E.g., there was one that went something like, "I was always confused about how Picard ordered his tea with the weird word order and exactly the same inflection every time, but now I recognize that's the tea order of a man who has learned precisely what is necessary to avoid the replicator delivering you an ocelot instead."

Notice how in TNG, everyone treats a PADD as a device that holds exactly one document and has to be physically handed to a person? The Doylist explanation is that it's a show from 1987 and everyone involved thought of them as notebooks. But the Watsonian explanation is that a device that holds exactly one document and zero distractions is the product of a society more psychologically healthy than ours....

AI will see a sharp decline in usage as a plot device

Today I was looking for some new audiobooks again, and I was scrolling through curated^1^ lists for various genres. In the sci-fi genre, there is a noticeable uptick in AI-related fiction books. I have noticed this for a while already, and it's getting more intense. Most seem about "what if AI, but really powerful and scary" and singularity-related scenarios. While such fiction themes aren't new at all, it appears to me that there's a wave of it now, although it's possible as well that I am just more cognisant of it.

I think that's another reason that will make your prediction true: sooner or later demand for this sub-genre will peak, as many people eventually become bored with it as a fiction theme as well. Like it happened with e.g. vampires and zombies.

(^1^ Not sure when "curation" is even human-sourced these days. The overall state of curation, genre-sorting, tagging and algorithmic "recommendations" in commercial books and audiobooks is so terrible... but that's a different rant for another day.)

That is a bit weird, as iirc the robots in star wars are not based on LLMs, the robots in SWs can think, and can be sentient beings but are often explicitly limited. (And according to Lucas this was somewhat intentional to show that people should be treated equally (if this was the initial intent is unclear as Lucas does change his mind a bit from time to time), the treatment of robots as slaves in SW is considered bad). What a misreading of the universe and the point. Also time flows the other way folks, LLMs didn't influence the creation of robots in SWs.

Also if the droids were LLMs, nobody would use them to plot hyperspace lanes past stars. Somebody could send a message about Star Engorgement and block hyperspace travel for weeks.

But yes, the backlash is going to be real.

E: ow god im really in a 'take science fiction too seriously' period. (more SW droids are not LLMs stuff)

it’s not like any of you read him regularly

Of course not he is a capitalist pigdog! A traitor to the cause! Bla bla. ;)

I posted his work here before, despite thinking he isnt totally correct about his stance on capitalism stuff. He seems to be a good source on the whole medical chemistry science field. And quite skeptical and hype resistance. (Prob also why he I could make de self deprecating joke above). He wrote also negatively about the hackers who do homemade meds thing.

it's very tired and shagged out after a long squawk. Just today I did [REDACTED] to alleviate the DDOS scraper bots and it's ticking along nicely right now. Keeping an eye on things.

Disappointing if true. The omake for TH19 hits the nail on the head on why genAI as it exists today is antithetical to the ethos of the series.

Update: I already owned Touhou 10 so started playing it now that I was thinking of it and stages 3 and 4 are wrecking me send help.

subscriptionless vmware users

perpetual license holders

What a bunch of weird and off-putting ways to avoid saying owners of a product that they fucking bought.

The article is about broadcom sending cease and desists to vmware owners who download updates by the way, because apparently to be entitled to any kind of after sale support you need to be leasing the product.