gerikson

joined 2 years ago
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

spoilers for a number of works follow

Hyperion - mankind lives in uneasy competition with semi-hostile AIs. Wars between human factions have already killed billions. The Earth is destroyed by a science experiment dropping a black hole into the core. The farcaster (teleportation) network causes ecological disasters on multiple planets.

Dune - after catastrophic wars between humans and AIs, computers are forbidden. The only way to travel interstellar distances are via the monopoly of the Guild navigators. Society is explicitely feudal. Our hero protagonist disrupts this, establishing a theocracy in a war that kills billions. His successor holds humanity in societal stasis for millenia, to induce the Scattering that will preserve it from similar societies in the future. Of course, billions die during this period.

Foundation - humanity collapses into a new Dark Age. Presumably, trillions die.

Ringworld - I read it long ago but it was so 70s I've basically blotted it out. The wiki summary indicates it's not so bad unless you're stranded on the Ringworld itself.


[–] gerikson@awful.systems 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Except my feeling is it's mostly people who have grown up with Linux as a settled fact of computing life, not Unix greybeards.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Don't have much to add, other than I first became aware of this connection when Freenode imploded. I wrote in a short essay that

[the] dominant ideology of new Freenode is free speech, anti-LGBT, and adherence to fringe Unix shibboleths such as anti-systemd, anti-Codes of Conduct, and anti anti-RMS.

(src)

Maybe it's connected to the phenomenon of old counter-cultural activist become massive racists.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 17 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

As an Apple customer I am entirely unmoved by their utter failure to shoehorn an LLM into their gadgets. I'm starting to think they might have dodged a bullet by missing the hype train.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 14 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

"Shocker", yeah right. Least surprising appearance ever.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 15 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

This FT post about the VC ghouls getting blindsided by daddies Elon and Trump fighting is pretty entertaining

https://www.ft.com/content/df15f13d-310f-47a5-89ed-330a6a379068

https://archive.is/cKxyV

David Friedberg, a co-host of the All-In podcast that often features Musk and that has become a sounding board for the Trump-aligned tech world, suggested there was a broader cost to America from the spat between the US president and the Tesla boss. “China just won,” he posted.

Behind the scenes, prominent Silicon Valley figures were desperately trying to prevent Musk from appearing on an emergency episode of the podcast, according to two people familiar with the matter, out of concern that the billionaire would make the dispute even worse and poison the relationship with tech’s most powerful ally in Washington, vice-president JD Vance.

L. O. L.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 12 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

I wonder if the US is closing in on the “imprison inconvenient billionaires for tax evasion” stage of managed democracy

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 11 points 3 weeks ago

there's no anime avatar, how do we know it's really Elon?

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 12 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

This post is gold.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

"Mr. Burns" -- too on the nose. Try better, scriptwriters.

Using Runaway’s AI technology, the studio can avoid a pricy film shoot that would cost millions and take a few days and use AI to create the shot for about $10,000.

"I have been in this business long enough to become vice chairman. What is this "CGI" you speak of?"

(not sure you can get that sort of shot for less than $10K but you don't have to literally go out an shoot on film/digital actors and shit)

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 13 points 3 weeks ago

This piece, although in a way defeatist, also gives me hope because there's at least one other person who has the same general feeling about LLMs that I do, and is a better writer.

https://blog.glyph.im/2025/06/i-think-im-done-thinking-about-genai-for-now.html

I'm gonna think that the latest drumbeat of pro-LLM posts (tpacek's screed, this excrescense) is a last gasp of a system running in midair like the Coyote, before the VC money dries up.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 13 points 4 weeks ago (4 children)

Lobsters went down a VC financing rabbit hole the other day (thanks to me and @dgerard) and a user horked up this absolutely bonkers defense of OpenAI losing a galactic sum of money:

https://lobste.rs/s/wjb9ox/minio_removes_web_ui_features_from#c_rgatzz

(reproduced below in case it is removed in shame)


OpenAI is very different. They mainly lose money on ChatGPT, but it’s not really lost money, because they in turn accumulate fresh daha to further train their models. Data that none of their competitors have access to.

OpenAI is also different because AI is a major geopolitical factor at the moment and unless you’ve been living in a cave lately, you must have noticed that geopolitics is much more important than money these days. ChatGPT is an incredible intelligence gathering channel and cutting access to AI APIs would make US sanctions hurt that much more. The only other country that can compete with US companies when it comes to bulk training data access is China, via their social media alternatives like TikTok and RedNote. You can imagine the geopolitical implications of that too.

 

Yes, I know it's a Verge link, but I found the explanation of the legal failings quite funny, and I think it's "important" we keep track of which obscenely rich people are mad at each other so we can choose which of their kingdoms to be serfs in.

 

Apologies for the link to The Register...

Dean Phillips is your classic ratfucking candidate, attempting to siphon off support from the incumbent to help their opponent. After a brief flare of hype before the (unofficial) NH primary, he seems to have flamed out by revealing his master plan too early.

Anyway, apparently some outfit called "Delphi" tried to create an AI version of him via a SuperPAC and got their OpenAI API access banned for their pains.

Quoth ElReg:

Not even the presence of Matt Krisiloff, a founding member of OpenAI, at the head of the PAC made a difference.

The pair have reportedly raised millions for We Deserve Better, driven in part by a $1 million donation from hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, who described his funding of the super PAC as "the largest investment I have ever made in someone running for office."

So the same asshole who is combating "woke" and DEI is bankrolling Phillips, supposed to be the new Bernie. Got it.

1
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by gerikson@awful.systems to c/meta@awful.systems
 

Anyone else have this problem? It’s been bothering me for a while and is the last thing keeping me using mobile Chrome.

On the login page , after entering username and password, the “login” button does nothing. It might slightly change color but I am not directed to the site logged in, nor do I get an error.

platform: iOS

The username and password are entered automatically via either Firefox’s password store, or iOS’.

 

Years ago (we're talking decades) I ran into a small program that randomly generated raytraced images (think transparent orbs, lens flares, reflection etc), suitable for saving as wallpapers. It was a C/C++ program that ran on Linux. I've long since lost the name and the source code, and I wonder if there's anything like that out there now?

 

Rules: no spoilers.

The other rules are made up as we go along.

Share code by link to a forge, home page, pastebin (Eric Wastl has one here) or code section in a comment.

 

The wider community is still on Reddit, I wonder if there’s an interest to have a small alternative?

If not, what’s a good Lemmy instance for these things?

 

In a since deleted thread on another site, I wrote

For the OG effective altruists, it’s imperative to rebrand the kooky ultra-utilitarianists as something else. TESCREAL is the term adopted by their opponents.

Looks like great minds think alike! The EA's need to up their google juice so people searching for the term find malaria nets, not FTX. Good luck on that, Scott!

The HN comments are ok, with this hilarious sentence

I go to LessWrong, ACX, and sometimes EA meetups. Why? Mainly because it's like the HackerNews comment section but in person.

What's the German term for a recommendation that's the exact opposite?

 

[this is probably off-topic for this forum, but I found it on HN so...]

Edit "enjoy" the discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38233810

 

Title is ... editorialized.

19
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by gerikson@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
 

Title quote stolen from JZW: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/10/the-best-way-to-profit-from-ai/

Yet again, the best way to profit from a gold rush is to sell shovels.

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