Archive link.

Goldberg assumed it was fake, but he waited for the attacks to happen for confirmation, which they did. Perhaps people are a bit smarter than you think.

I did believe that I was the target of a disinformation campaign. And so when I got the text at 11:44 a.m. saying that at 1:30 p.m. bombs will start falling in Yemen, I thought to myself, ‘Well, if there is actually an American attack at 1:30 p.m., then I’ll know that that this that the Signal chat is real and I have to I have to consider my next steps.’ "

Same here! I was pretty skeptical but it ended up being a lot of fun. I wish it was longer. It definitely has strong TNG vibes, and you can really feel the weight of being captain in some of the scenes. Highly recommend this for any Trek fan, despite the super janky mechanics.

Not only is no help available, but the Dept of Ed has been pestering borrowers to re-certify their Income-Driven Repayment plan, since Biden’s SAVE plan is blocked by the courts leaving the shitty IDR as the only option for those who can’t afford their full payments (most people, I’d assume). But if you go to the page where you do the recertification, you’ll find that the forms have all been taken down.

It’s purposeful, to cause the maximum amount of pain to the most number of people who are the least likely to be able to handle it. I think a lot of them actually do want to burn it all down, and screw all the people who are harmed in the process. That’s what they want their legacy to be. They don’t want people who aren’t already wealthy to benefit from education.

Casey Newton founded Platformer, after leaving The Verge around 5 years ago. But yeah, I used to listen to Hard Fork, his podcast with Kevin Roose, but I stopped because of how uncritically they cover AI and LLMs. It’s basically the only thing they cover, and yet they are quite gullible and not really realistic about the whole industry. They land some amazing interviews with key players, but never ask hard questions or dive nearly deep enough, so they end up sounding pretty fluffy as ass-kissy. I totally agree with Zitron’s take on their reporting. I constantly found myself wishing they were a lot more cynical and combative.

That’s an interesting article, but it was published in 2022, before LLMs were a thing on anyone’s radar. The results are still incredibly impressive without a doubt, but based on how the researchers explain it, it looks like it was accomplished using deep learning, which isn’t the same as LLMs. Though they’re not entirely unrelated.

Opaque and confusing terminology in this space also just makes it very difficult to determine who or which systems or technology are actually making these advancements. As far as I’m concerned none of this is actual AI, just very powerful algorithmic prediction models. So the claims that an AI system itself has made unique technological advancements, when they are incapable of independent creativity, to me proves that nearly all their touted benefits are still entirely hypothetical right now.

The article explains the problems in great detail.

Here’s just one small section of the text which describes some of them:

All of this certainly makes knowledge and literature more accessible, but it relies entirely on the people who create that knowledge and literature in the first place—that labor that takes time, expertise, and often money. Worse, generative-AI chatbots are presented as oracles that have “learned” from their training data and often don’t cite sources (or cite imaginary sources). This decontextualizes knowledge, prevents humans from collaborating, and makes it harder for writers and researchers to build a reputation and engage in healthy intellectual debate. Generative-AI companies say that their chatbots will themselves make scientific advancements, but those claims are purely hypothetical.

(I originally put this as a top-level comment, my bad.)

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Charred fatty goose breast.

Blew my mind.

Your description of those desks totally knocked some of my old memories loose. I remember going to a friend’s house in the late 90s when the first smallish “all-in-one” PCs started coming on the market (before the iMac claimed that space in ‘98). They had their new all-in-one PC set up on a tiny desk in the hallway outside their office. It was there so everyone in the family could use it, but I remember being shocked at how small it was, and so impressed that it didn’t need the whole corner of a room.

Wait, am I the only one who thought that game was an underrated masterpiece? The graphics were gorgeous and performant, and the mission design was intuitive and challenging. I 100%ed every mission, and loved all the investigation mechanics. I was recently thinking about doing a full replay…

Oh, we must.

If I had to choose between those options, I’d eat them slowly throughout the day.

But in reality, it’s two sittings: one row in the afternoon, and the rest at the unhealthiest of times, around 9pm.

I do everything I can, with the resources I have available to me. I vote, protest, organize, regularly call my reps, donate to independent media, and engage with all my friends and family on the issues whenever possible. What else, specifically, do you suggest?

I’ve been paying close attention. I think it’s important to focus on the individual cases as they happen, acknowledge who is harmed, and not just move on to the next thing. Trump wants us frenzied and confused so we can’t focus on anything, let alone what’s coming next.

As for what I do about it, I call my representatives about each individual issue separately, so their logs show constituent interest on a variety of issues. I attend protests and engage with my local government, I volunteer, organize, and donate, and I financially support independent media outlets. Thanks for asking.

I’m just some American dude on the internet, but strategically speaking, turning on one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world, a country that’s also one of our closest allies, doesn’t make a ton of sense to me. We lose their trust by betraying them, and also lose their cooperation on one of the things they do way better than us? Seems like it hurts everybody.

Yeah, I hate the interfaces, but especially the super-loud non-mutable beeps which seem to be common on every model I’ve seen. My two-burner induction setup has analog knobs for temp control, which is awesome, but it stills beep when you turn them, with every single temperature increase. Drives me crazy.

I’ll never go back to gas though. My new apartment came with a gorgeous brand new gas range, and it absolutely sucks compared to my $50 countertop induction.

I think you are underestimating the power of empathy. I mean this constructively, not as an attack. In my opinion, it’s the single most important emotion for leading a fulfilling life, maintaining healthy relationships, and contributing to and living in a healthy society. The cool thing about empathy is that almost everyone can learn how to do it, even if it doesn’t come naturally. Think of it like a muscle you need to exercise. If you don’t use it regularly, your abilities can atrophy.

You’ve already recognized that you’re not great at empathy, which shows that you are capable of self-awareness, which is huge! The next step is just to find a way to turn that awareness inside out and put yourself in other peoples’ shoes.

The fact that you’re wrestling with the issues you bring up, shows me that you do care about these things. So I think it could be valuable to interrogate what specific things you do and don’t care about when it comes to all the things you mentioned. If you do that with empathy for others always in mind, I think most of your concerns will resolve themselves.

Cultivating Empathy

Do something real

If I had been planning to make a big purchase on Friday, but decided to join the boycott and not make the purchase, that is absolutely doing something. That is money that the retailer will not get from me.

If I usually buy groceries on Fridays, or Friday is the day I drive by the local Target and sometimes stop in, but because of the boycott I actively decide not to, that is absolutely doing something. That is money that those retailers might have come to expect, that they will not get from me.

If enough people make those decisions, the impact will most definitely be felt and reach the top.

Collective action is incredibly powerful. Sometimes collective action means deciding not to do something, together. And that is also incredibly powerful.

I’d love to hear your suggestions on what “real” looks like to you.

Ha! iRobot, what a trip that movie was…

Yeah, I don’t disagree at all that they were totally unfaithful to the material. I still enjoyed the show, but I deliberately force myself to take a huge step back and just watch those kinds of adaptations independent from the source material. I try my best to block off the memories of reading the books, and just enjoy the interpretation as much as I can. Doesn’t always work, but Foundation was visually beautiful enough to me that I could forget about what the story should have been and just escape into what it was.

Oh boy, this makes me nervous but cautiously excited. This is one of my favorite books, and is the first in my absolute favorite series of sci-fi novels. Banks’ Culture series represents the apex of space opera narrative for me, and it was the one series I was totally fine leaving on paper since it’s so dear to me.

I’m usually less critical of TV adaptations than most, so they’d reallllly have to fuck it up to ruin it for me. I’m an Asimov fan for example, and I didn’t hate the Foundation show…I know, I know, the heresy! So we’ll see what happens. There’s a lot they could do beautifully, and a lot they could really mess up.