There are neural nets that have been in use in industrial settings since the 70s and they’re obviously not what we’re talking about and they’re fine.

There are neural nets that are being used to try to detect cancer and whatever, and they’re obviously not what we’re talking about, and they’re… highly overrated actually, very prone to replication problems when you look at long term data, but worthy of continued study.

And there’s this one-size-fits-all mostly LLM-based mostly Sillicon Valley based new wave of AI, which is what the whole fucking world is talking about, and it’s not fine. It’s not fine at all.

Obviously the way these things were created is unethical, but unless you’ve got a lot more power to do something about it than I think, it does not matter and I don’t care.

The part I want to talk about is whether they’re useful, which is fraught, and I want to break that apart into some points:

• The vast majority of things AI is being used for is either bad, or do not work. Regardless of what it is capable of, the reality of use is that is used for scams and spams.

• Skill atrophy from using AI has already been measured.

• Remember when every fucking person was talking about cryptocurrency? Remember how a substantial portion of people who should’ve known better were trying so very hard to come up with a way the technology could be used for good? Imagine how many more people are getting duped like that now, with a technology that does, in fact, actually do something.

• Every headline about AI achieving whatever mathematical or coding milestone may be true, or may be false, or may be overblown, but it was always always always produced by a marketing department, for marketing purposes.

• People keep proposing workflows where your roles is to constantly check on the LLMs outputs. This has never worked in any other context. You will experience decision fatigue and your standards will decay until a constant percent of the LLM’s outputs get through, regardless of whether it’s on a hot streak or a shit streak. Every AI-based programming flow amounts to this, which means every AI programming flow becomes vibe coding when given enough time.

• Measuring programmer productivity by how many lines of code they write was already a common joke on the internet before many of you were born.

• Gee it sure is funny how these LLMs are so good at topics you know jack shit about, and make disqualifying errors every two sentences in topics you have expert knowledge in.

Despite all of the above, the technology does actually do something. It is not crypto again. But its uses and impacts cannot be understood during the marketing hype bubble. People are not capable of rationally evaluating something that’s hyped this much. And the truth will take way more time to figure out than the time it takes to get to the next part of the AI hype train anyway.

Despite the hype bubble, there is not actually a hurry to figure any of this out. Maybe it’s the real deal, maybe you’re missing out on the thing that will revolutionize everything. Maybe it’s not there now, but it gets there next Thursday. So what? Do you lose anything by getting around to it next year? The time pressure is coming from OpenAI’s marketing department. And yeah they need you to get on the AI train soon so they can make money, but you don’t owe Sam Altman shit.

Ask if they’re still selling novelty Charlie Kirk desk fountains.

Warcraft 3 mentioned

https://classic.battle.net/war3/orc/units/grunt.shtml

Grunts are the first and last line of the Horde’s defense. These powerful fighters arm themselves with mighty battle-axes and display all of the savagery and cunning of their race. In past generations, Grunts were characterized by their depravity and brutality. But now, under the visionary leadership of Thrall, the Grunts more closely resemble their savage, yet noble ancestors.

I could’ve swore this site said “savage, yet noble” a dozen times back in the day, idk if they changed it or it’s just on pages I didn’t check. I hadn’t heard of the noble savage myth back then, I just noticed that they used this weird phrasing so many times it felt awkward.

Is it still spaghetti if it’s just one big noodle, or is that just spaghett?

I’ve been using Mint since 2013 and basically nothing about it has changed in that time. I hope this gives you some solace.

I’ve also seen more people switch to Linux this year than ever before, and a dozen people go full sicko mode and start doing self-hosting shit to get off of Google services, something I’ve never seen before. I think there really is a cultural shift happening. I hope that also gives you some hope.

But spending more time offline is generally a good idea anyway, tbqh.

Everyone knows you dig down to reach China, why do you think the car is going to stop trying when you’re literally bringing it closer?

I heard about someone getting his grandfather posthumous Italian citizenship, then because he was two gens from an Italian citizen, he could then qualify.

So you could still pull it off!

Breadtube was a cultural moment where a bunch of center left video essayists showed up on youtube (previously not really known for video essays, more known for being kind of a cesspool) at about the same time, which matched with the political moment (people sick of the always failing Democrats and getting into Kropotkin) so suddenly having a bunch at once felt like some sort of political shift. But it later turned out that they all showed up at once because they were just the friends/classmates/whatevers of Lindsay Ellis or hbomberguy.

It lasted like two years before the people involved went to other things, and people convinced that “bunch of vaguely left video essayists on youtube” is a political movement kept grasping at straws to keep it going.

But then Microsoft would sue them.

Bread was never meant to be put in a tube.

Sorry France.

For fuck’s sake, they did that to Claude 2.5 years ago except instead of “pain” it was “golden gate bridge”

It was hilarious, and everybody back then still had their shit together enough to understood that this was a computer experiment and not making the machine feel whatever emotion “golden gate bridge” is.

Imagine the thing where you can’t imagine having aphantasia but it’s for imagining other things.

That’s gotta be some sort of record for the time between “shoot and cry” though. Can’t wait for the Summoning Salt video.

smh not even changing the part of the name that should be changed

Straight of Hormuz my ass, that’s a Bend of Hormuz if I’ve ever seen one.

it’s gonna be caused by vibe coding so it’s the Vibe Collapse

[cw drug abuse, prolonged terrible ideas, contemplating self harm] https://erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=79725

• have you ever said you felt so happy, you could die?
• what if you had to cut me off?
• would you rather make out like it never happened and that we were nothing, or treat me like a stranger?
• what if you changed your number?
• what if you were just somebody I used to know?

wait sorry those are Gotye questions my bad

I literally don’t remember but I don’t think it’s that surprising.

It used to be the most popular one in the whole software industry, but since github and students learning git in college, companies have mostly switched to git (it’s free, too). Now perforce is mostly a games industry thing, because it does still handle large binary files better than git.

No, Perforce has been around for ages, it’s older than git, svn, and fossil.

It’s unpopular because it’s owned by one proprietary company that doesn’t really know how to compete with the free-and-everywhere git.

I would much prefer a FOSS clone of perforce over the proprietary thing, but I find its command line interface so much better than git that I use it anyway.