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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • Surely this could backfire in so many hilarious ways?

    • Teach the parts that conservatives don’t do, and teach your class to call out injustice everywhere.
    • Teach the bible in Aramaic or Ancient Hebrew, and give the kids 30 mins of study time to learn whatever they want from it.
    • Use it as an exercise to teach that many parts were written thousands of years ago, and doesn’t have current medical or societal advancements, so that many parts might be up to interpretation.
    • Compare it to Islam, Judaism, and other sects of Christianity - and teach that they’re basically the same thing and that everyone should get along.
    • Reference that the pope said years ago that even nonbelievers that led a good life would be offered a seat in heaven, so be nice and it’ll all be fine.




  • All of big tech is really worried about this.

    • Apple is worried about its own science output, with many of their office heavily employing data scientists. A lot of people slate Siri, but Apple’s scientists put out a lot of solid research.
    • Amazon is plugging GenAI into practically everything to appease their execs, because it’s the only way to get funding. Moonshot ideas are dead, and all that remains is layoffs, PIP, and pumping AI into shit where it doesn’t belong to make shareholders happy. The innovation died, and AI replaced it.
    • Google has let AI divisions take over both search and big parts of ads. Both are reporting worse experiences for users, but don’t worry, any engineer worth anything was laid off and there are no opportunities in other divisions for you either. If there are, they probably got offshored…
    • Meta is struggling a lot less, probably because they were smart enough to lay off in one go, but they’re still plugging AI shite in places no one asked for it, with many divisions now severely down in headcount.

    If the AI boom is a dud, I can see many of these companies reducing their output further. If someone comes along and competes in their primary offering, there’s a real concern that they’ll lose ground in ways that were unthinkable mere years ago. Someone could legitimately challenge Google on search right now, and someone could build a cheap shop that doesn’t sell Chinese tat and uses local suppliers to compete with Amazon. Tech really shat the bed during the last economic downturn.


  • I work in AI as a software engineer. Many of my peers have PhD’s, and have sunk a lot of research into their field. I know probably more than the average techie, but in the grand scheme of things I know fuck all. Hell, if you were to ask the scientists I work with if they “know AI” they’ll probably just say “yeah, a little”.

    Working in AI has exposed me to so much bullshit, whether it’s job offers for obvious scams that’ll never work, or for “visionaries” that work for consultancies that know as little about AI as the next person, but market themselves as AI experts. One guy had the fucking cheek to send me a message on LinkedIn to say “I see you work in AI, I’m hosting a webinar, maybe you’ll learn something”.

    Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of cool stuff out there, and some companies are doing some legitimately cool stuff, but the actual use-cases for these tools where they won’t just be productivity enhancers/tools is low at best. I fully support this guy’s efforts to piledrive people, and will gladly lend him my sword.



  • I’m in the UK, and First basically hold the monopoly in my city. There are so few buses that they often skip stops at rush hour because they’re already full, or because they’ve decided in the moment that your stop doesn’t matter.

    Nothing wakes you up during your commute like listening to a woman get fired over the phone because she’s going to be late for work, despite still being 60 mins early for what should be a 20 min journey.




  • The show had so much potential, but at times it was an absolute mess of ideas, whether it was weird musical numbers, or bizarre tone shifts. The whole “they’re the chosen one with amazing powers given by birthright/zero effort” trope aside, it often felt like the show was an audition for the actors/writers to show range for future work. I started the show happy, and finished it feels a mixture of confusion and annoyance…

    The aunties were great, though - and always great to see Eowyn on screen again.






  • I work in AI.

    We’ve known this about LLM’s for many years. One of the reasons they weren’t widely used was due to hallucinations, where they’ll be coerced into saying something confidently incorrect. OpenAI created a great set of tools that showed true utility for LLM’s, and people were able to largely accept that even if it’s wrong, it’s good for basic tasks like writing a doc outline or filling in boilerplate in scripts.

    Sadly, grifters have decided that LLM’s were the future, and they’ve put them into applications where they have no more benefit than other, compositional models. While they’re great at orchestration, they’re just not suited to search, answering broad questions with limited knowledge, or voice-based search - all areas they’ll be launched in. This doesn’t even scratch the surface of a LLM being used for critical subjects that require knowledge of health or the law, because those companies that decided that AI will build software for them, or run HR departments are going to be totally fucked when a big mistake happens.

    It’s an arms race that no one wants, and one that arguably hasn’t created anything worthwhile yet, outside of a wildly expensive tool that will save you some time. What’s even sadder is that I bet you could go to any of these big tech companies and ask IC’s if this is a good use of their time and they’ll say no. Tens of thousands of jobs were lost, and many worthwhile projects were scrapped so some billionaire cunts could enter an AI pissing contest.


  • It’s weird, because in many ways he could’ve been viewed as a champion of the left. He owns one of the largest brands in “sustainable” travel, owns a space company, and has money to burn.

    I think he probably had a mental breakdown a few years ago, and that what we’ve seen is from him is basically untreated mental illness, exacerbated by being pals with the likes of Rogan and Chappelle, two guys that can handle fame and not give a fuck.

    But things could’ve been very different if he weren’t such a cunt.