istewart @ istewart @awful.systems

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11 mo. ago

I propose we pool funds, buy an old motel on the other side of the city limits in Oakland, and rename it Farthaven

Notwithstanding the subject matter, I feel like I've always gotten limited value from these Oxford-style university debates. KQED used to run a series called Intelligence Squared US that crammed it into an hour, and I shudder to think what that's become in the era of Trump and AI. It seems like a format that was developed to be the intellectual equivalent of intramural sports, complete with a form of scoring. But that contrivance renders it devoid of nuance, and also means it can be used to platform and launder ugly bullshit, since each side has to be strictly pro- or anti-whatever.

Really, it strikes me as a forerunner of the false certainty and point-scoring inherent in Twitter-style short-form discourse. In some ways, the format was unconsciously pared down and plopped online, without any sort of inquiry into its weaknesses. I'd be interested to know if anyone feels any different.

Time magazine is, of course, now a property of Salesforce bobblehead Marc Benioff. So one wonders if there are editorial decisions being made at a high level, much like the Washington Post.

so an alternative, somewhat weaker fireball spell

Butt

( Y )

There aren't really many other options besides Springer and self-publishing for a book like that, right? I've gotten some field-specific article compilations from CRC Press, but I guess that's just an imprint of Routledge.

Considering Tesla's well-documented issues with functional door handles, this may be more accurate than you think

Marginally related, but I was just served a YouTube ad for chewing gum (yes, I'm too lazy to setup ad block).

"Respawn, by Razer. They didn't have gaming gum at Pompeii, just saying."

I think I felt part of my frontal lobe die to that incomprehensible sales pitch, so you all must be exposed to it as well.

Yeah, Phoronix is somehow a tier below even below HN. The Gamergate freaks of Linux enthusiasts. At least on Slashdot or HN, you might occasionally get someone with actual technical expertise posting. Phoronix just seems like a playground to push whatever the latest "I got this software for free and I hate it" grievance is, which is a profoundly pathetic thing indeed.

The "system prompt" phenomenon is one of the most flatly dopey things to come out of this whole mess. To put it politely, this seems like, uh, a very loosely causal way to set boundaries in high-dimensional latent spaces, if that's really what you're trying to do.

I put this prompt into my local Ollama instance, and suddenly Amazon is constantly delivering off-brand MOLLE vests and random stuff meant to attach to Picatinny rails, plus I also have nineteen separate subscriptions to the Black Rifle Coffee Company brew-of-the-month club. Help?

But Star Trek says the smartest guys in the room don't have emotions

I did in fact have fun! If the quick-hit format turns out to be worth your time, I have to say I quite enjoy it, and I hardly count myself as a TikTok-obsessed zoomer.

I've been a little bit sad that Ed Z dropped the rapid-fire 15-minute format once he hit the podcast big time. I really appreciated that format's conciseness; not sure if you'd want to pick that sort of thing up. I have to wonder if it's easier or harder to book people for such a delimited time slot.

The Maoist version of Misesian goldbuggery, absolutely fascinating.

Isn't this guy still mainly relevant for jailbreaking the PS3? Pretty sure he flamed out during the Muskification of Twitter

I'm convinced that these people have no choice but to do their next startup, especially if their names are already prominent in the press like Sutskever and Murati. Once you're off the grift train, there is no easy way back on. I guess you can maybe sneak back in as a VC staffer or an independent board member, but that doesn't seem quite as remunerative.

So, with Mr. Yudkowsky providing the example, it seems that one can practice homeopathy with "engineering mindset?"

Folks may want to close OpenAI accounts if they don’t want Oracle billing them someday.

geez, at least spoiler-tag a jump-scare this big

Bruce Wayne asserts to Alfred in The Dark Knight that "Batman has no limits." But what if, and this has gone totally unconsidered by anyone up until now... Buttman also has no limits????

Central Preference Vector seems like a fantastic band name if some producer was trying to mainstream industrial music

It helps sanewash their own prejudices. "See, this guy could be talked down from the worst of it, aren't we reasonable by comparison?"