Liam’s here, for what it’s worth.

I almost wrote down, it sounded like it was written by a lurker on techtakes. The overlap of takes was just so damn high.

I regret to inform you, that this garbage was run by The Register a while ago.

It shouts out several friends of the sub, including @[email protected], PivotToAI, OpenSlopware, Robert Kingett & Ludicity.

The point of the piece is that all anti-AI folks should just get along, and if we are to stand a chance against corporate AI we need to get over our petty grievances and reach out a hand to the racists, homophobes and crypto-bros and work together in the spirit of Open Source!

I just got hit by a memory from what must have been 2021, when I was working for a uni-attached startup center. I was lounging in our event space, when my colleague hit me with a question from left field: Would there be a benefit to cooling servers in space, since space is cold?

Little did he know that I was ready to unload my knowledge absorbed from the Expanse series, which I was reading on repeat to cope with my depressing job. So I infodumped on him about how being in space is like being in a thermos and about the Peltier effect being used in spacecraft radiators. He didn’t say much in response, and I wasn’t too stoked about my social skills in that moment.

Now I wonder if I saved him from a really embarassing decision. He was an ex-Amazon project manager who was non-committally looking for a PhD topic or maybe a startup. He quit a few months later and went into consulting I think.

The website looks too slick and the solution (though fucking around with fonts is fun) is overcomplicated.

Maybe some old media orgs or publishers will take this up, to protect their valuable IP while still having a slick web appearance.

Congratulations for your securing of relatively tolerable employment!

You’re argument seems like Suresh’s to me, in that making working software is just laughably easy for a competent engineer.

This begs the question why noone is exploiting this market gap. But there’s a couple explanations…

It can be a coordination problem, in that there are just barely any competent software organisations with enough engineers. The problem can also lie in how software is bought, since customers seem completely unable to determine the competence of vendors. Perceptions on what kind of software is a safe, respectable choice may even be anti-helpful in this regard.

I don’t think you have to be hypercritical of that part. Sure, rose-colored glasses could play into it but he calls the bad stuff bad and doesn’t justify it via the good stuff.

Also the stuff he describes seems plausibly achievable through buddhist spiritial practice:

In many ways MAPLE delivered: life-long friendships, freedom from past addictions and limiting self-narratives, strengthened character, and, for many of us, profound spiritual openings and realizations.

This Soryu figure seems fairly well accredited in that department. He just also happens to be a megalomaniacal control freak.

(Also, why does he have to share a name with Asoka? I’m dying a little.)

edit: I knew I spelt megalomaniacal wrong…

Of course there’s a class element to this, but you give them too much credit.

This isn’t poor people being exposed to stupid AI so rich people can reap the benefits of actual AI. This is poor people being subjected to stupid AI so AI company shareholders can pretend that their stupid AI is worth anything for another quarter.

I once listened to a talk by a guy from german OSHA that hit a lot of the good points. Perceived productivity opposed to actual productivity from the METR studies. Mental load of alien code review. (This was a company-internal IT-expert exchange thingy.)

A question in Q&A (submitted anonymously on slido like a sniveling coward) was deadass “Have you ever coded with a frontier model?”

Yeh, I’ve been complaining about noncritical german news for a while. DW is not much better on tech issues.

Although sometimes, a critical piece slips through. E.g. on the fact that chatbots are turning brains to mush in a measurable fashion and that a lot of businesses and professionals are telling whoever is asking that this shit just doesn’t work.

Still, the big-tech-press-piece-to-reputable-news-story pipeline is going strong.

The relation of tech and emergency services is something I became acutely aware of, when my volunteer firefighter unit recently got 2 alarms in one week that turned out to be someone lost his IPhone driving through a curve. (Apparently they have a G-sensor/accident detector and can robocall emergency services.)

Okay, it’s not that common. IPhones do that for years and those 2 were our only cases of that. Still sucks to get the news via radio, when you’re already in full kit ready to roll.

I’m sure this guy is human trash, but the last one is just funny.

I never understood why foids had a whole separate doctor until I got married and started hearing about all the crazy stuff

I’m sorry, but I think this would be funny if a cool, normal guy said it. Makes OB/Gyn sound kinda rad, really.

There’s a take in there somewhere, about “dark web”-like online communities and how they form too thin a social fabric to keep people accountable and aligned with a common good, so personal grievances and economic incentives take over.

Someone probably already wrote it up better than I could bother.

I looked at AirVPN and didn’t find anything too weird yet.

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While we’re suggesting stuff, you can just make a nuudel instead!

(It’s a free german Framadate instance.)

Oof, Kallas is in there (VP EU Commission). Wonder what her press statement will be…

The counterargument is basically rule utilitarianism, right? That not only the direct outputs of your actions matter, but also the processes and social norms that you reinforce, and the total side effects of those.

(At least I think that’s what rule utilitarianism is.)

This hack also waltzes past two-factor authentication.

The Krebs article didn’t substantiate that. Is there a source of people getting past MFA with the hack?

Heise was gushing about (1) Google & OpenAI working together on tagging AI output and (2) camera-makers trying to push cryptographical attestations for real photographs.

Felt the need to point out that (1) is just fear of Habsburg-AI and (2) is a road to a DRM-like unworkable dystopia.