I would also like to understand under what definition ChatGPT can be classified as āconnection technologyā.
sometimes a dragon
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- nightsky@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢Stubsack: Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 29th June 2025English7Ā·3 days ago
- nightsky@awful.systemstoSneerClub@awful.systemsā¢Wake up babe, new "in this moment I am enlightened" copypasta just droppedEnglish26Ā·15 days ago
Wait, theyāre still drinking coffee, and it takes 58 minutes? Jeez, my genai quantum robot does that in 58 seconds and summarizes the gustatory experience into 3 bullet points for me. Get with the times.
- nightsky@awful.systemstoSneerClub@awful.systemsā¢Wake up babe, new "in this moment I am enlightened" copypasta just droppedEnglish12Ā·15 days ago
The resolution to all this depends on psychic luck produced by evolutionary processes over the course of a handful of generations on Earth.
Oh and donāt forget the cat people that used to be more aggressive but now they are nicer because of all the long wars in which the aggressive ones killed each other. I liked Ringworld overall, but indeed there is an awful lot of eugenics thinking in there.
- nightsky@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 15th June 2025English12Ā·17 days ago
Can you imagine selling something like a firewall appliance with a setting called āYolo Modeā, or even a tax software or a photo organizer or anything that handles any data, even if only of middling importance, and then still expect to be taken seriously at all?
- nightsky@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 15th June 2025English20Ā·19 days ago
Ok, maybe someone can help me here figure something out.
Iāve wondered for a long time about a strange adjacency which I sometimes observe between what I call (due to lack of a better term) āunix conservativismā and fascism. Itās the strange phenomenon where ideas about āclassicā and āpureā unix systems coincide with the worst politics. For example the āsucklessā stuff. Or the ramblings of people like ESR. Criticism of systemd is sometimes infused with it (yes, there is plenty of valid criticism as well. But thereās this other kind of criticism Iāve often seen, which is icky and weirdly personal). And Iāve also seen traces of this in discussions of programming languages newer than C, especially when topics like memory safety come up.
This is distinguished from retro computing and nostalgia and such, those are unrelated. If someone e.g. just likes old unix stuff, thatās not what I mean.
You may already notice, I struggle a bit to come up with a clear definition and whether there really is a connection or just a loose set of examples that are not part of a definable set. So, is there really something there or am I seeing a connection that doesnāt exist?
Iāve also so far not figured out what might create the connection. Ideas I have come up with are: appeal to times that are gone (going back to an idealized computing past that never existed), elitism (computers must not become user friendly), ideas of purity (an imaginary pure āunix philosophyā).
Anyway, now with this new xlibre project, thereās another one that fits into itā¦
- nightsky@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 15th June 2025English9Ā·20 days ago
Yes, thank you, Iām also annoyed about this. Even classic āAIā approaches for simple pattern detection (what used to be called āMLā a few hype waves ago, although itās much older than that even) are now conflated with capabilities of LLMs. People are led to believe that ChatGPT is the latest and best and greatest evolution of āAIā in general, with all capabilities that have ever been in anything. And itās difficult to explain how wrong this is without getting too technical.
Related, this fun article: ChatGPT āAbsolutely Wreckedā at Chess by Atari 2600 Console From 1977
- nightsky@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 15th June 2025English15Ā·22 days ago
- You will understand how to use AI tools for real-time employee engagement analysis
- You will create personalized employee development plans using AI-driven analytics
- You will learn to enhance employee well-being programs with AI-driven insights and recommendations
You will learn to create the torment nexus
- You will prepare your career for your future work in a world with robots and AI
You will learn to live in the torment nexus
- You will gain expertise in ethical considerations when implementing AI in HR practices
I assume itās a single slide that says āLOL who caresā
- nightsky@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 15th June 2025English14Ā·22 days ago
Maybe someone has put into their heads that they have to āgo with the timesā, because AI is āinevitableā and āhere to stayā. And if they donāt adapt, AI would obsolete them. That Wikipedia would become irrelevant because their leadership was hostile to āprogressā and rejected āemerging technologyā, just like Wikipedia obsoleted most of the old print encyclopedia vendors. And one day they would be blamed for it, because they were stuck in the past at a crucial moment. But if they adopt AI now, they might imagine, one day they will be praised as the visionaries who carried Wikipedia over to the next golden age of technology.
Of course all of that is complete bullshit. But instilling those fears (āuse it now, or you will be left behind!ā) is a big part of the AI marketing messaging which is blasted everywhere non-stop. So I wouldnāt be surprised if those are the brainworms in their heads.
- nightsky@awful.systemstoSneerClub@awful.systemsā¢Jim Miller puts the cart FAR before the horseEnglish13Ā·28 days ago
Legal anime streaming services herald the end times.
Yes, if itās not a fansub which randomly retains some Japanese words while overlaying half the picture with text to explain why it canāt be translated due to finely nuanced meanings, then what are you even watching, the ASI (anime superintelligence) disapproves.
- nightsky@awful.systemstoSneerClub@awful.systemsā¢Jim Miller puts the cart FAR before the horseEnglish12Ā·28 days ago
But wait, the best(*) animes came out in the 90s, early 00s. What does that mean? Is the simulation running out of juice?
(*) details of my anime evaluation function are confidential and proprietary
- nightsky@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 8th June 2025English18Ā·29 days ago
Also, happy Pride :3
Yes, happy pride month everyone!
Iāve decided that this year Iām going to be more open about this and wear a pride bracelet whenever I go in public this month. Including for (remote) work meetings where nobody knows⦠wonder if anyone will notice.
- nightsky@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢1970s AI bros (incl McCarthy) whining about the inventor of ELIZA telling them to gfyEnglish4Ā·30 days ago
Thatās it, Iām ordering a copy.
- nightsky@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢1970s AI bros (incl McCarthy) whining about the inventor of ELIZA telling them to gfyEnglish1Ā·30 days ago
Ah, thanks, well my sarcasm detector isnāt that good.
- nightsky@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢Microsoft and AI: spending billions to make millionsEnglish31Ā·1 month ago
160,000 organisations, sending 251 million messages! [ā¦] A message costs one cent. [ā¦] Microsoft is forecast to spend $80 billion on AI in 2025.
No problem. To break even, they can raise prices just a little bit, from one cent per message to, uuh, $318 per message. I donāt think that such a tiny price bump is going to reduce usage or scare away any customers, so they can just do that.
- nightsky@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢1970s AI bros (incl McCarthy) whining about the inventor of ELIZA telling them to gfyEnglish27Ā·1 month ago
From McCarthyās reply:
My current answer to the question of when machines will reach human-level intelligence is that a precise calculation shows that we are between 1.7 and 3.1 Einsteins and .3 Manhattan Projects away from the goal.
omg this statement sounds 100% like something that could be posted today by Sam Altman on X. Itās hititing exactly the sweet spot between appearing precise but also super vague, like Altmanās āa few thousand daysā.
- nightsky@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢1970s AI bros (incl McCarthy) whining about the inventor of ELIZA telling them to gfyEnglish11Ā·1 month ago
Also great, right after that:
Nevertheless, it is common in literature for a good writer - to show greater understanding of the experience of the opposite sex than a poorer writer of that sex.
Yeeeaah, sure. And to write that in the 1970s even.
If anything, this McCarthy reply makes me want to read the Weizenbaum book.
- nightsky@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 1st June 2025English7Ā·1 month ago
I didnāt know that uwu news influencer was a thing.
Same, and also Iām still trying to process that āuwuā breached out of furry spaces and became a widely understood term. (Although Iām not entirely sure what way it took, itās also possible that it breached out of anime-related communities. Maybe some day cyber-archeologists can figure this out.)
- nightsky@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 1st June 2025English10Ā·1 month ago
In the collection of links of what Ive has done in recent years, thereās one to an article about a turntable redesign he worked on, and from that article:
The Sondek LP12 has always been entirely retrofittable and Linn has released 50 modular hardware upgrades to the machine, something that Ive said he appreciates. āI love the idea that after years of ownership you can enjoy a product thatās actually better than the one you bought years before,ā said Ive.
I donāt know, should I laugh, or should I scream, that itās Ive, of all people, saying that.
- nightsky@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 25th May 2025English11Ā·1 month ago
Iām heckinā moving to Switzerland next month holy hell.
Good luck!!
they posted these two videos to TikTok in response to the AI backlash
The cringey āhello, fellow kidsā vibe is really unbearable⦠good that people are not falling for that.
Iām in therapy and much better than I used to, but from my past before that, I am unfortunately quite experienced over many years in having existential worries and anxieties about extremely unlikely things.
And then I see thisā¦
ā¦and damn, thatās next-level thinking, even for me.