TechTakes

I mean I don't doubt that some folks on the internet were absolute bastards about it. At the same time, while I've got a lot of love for Rian Johnson's work and don't have any room to criticize the process that creates it, I do have concerns. First off, while it's artistically satisfying and a good personal defense, retreating into a bubble away from criticism doesn't stop the economic and social repercussions of that criticism, which can definitely reflect back on the artistic product as it did when the far less interesting JJ Abrams was brought back to do the last Star Wars movie instead of letting Rian keep going. I don't have a good solution for that, since fighting the internet hate machine isn't something I'd wish on anyone, but it's still a problem. This is especially the case with Gen AI here because the economic and social consequences that technology has on artistic production and creativity are the whole point of the criticism. Like, it's not just that AI art is bad - we've seen plenty of bad art from human beings make it to theaters. Even if it gets less bad it's replacing actual people with artistic visions and actual lives with a machine that is, somehow, even more of an environmental disaster and economic drain on society. It sounds like this is the kind of story that might be trying to engage with some of that in a meaningful way, but I don't think that justifies actually using it here. Like, if you're paying to enter the torment nexus in order to post up your propogands about how we shouldn't have created the torment nexus, you're still paying the fuckers who created the torment nexus for their creation of the torment nexus.

It brings moi le grand ennui to peruse the excessively florid and terminally gallicistic language of this higly self-esteemed publication elevating the persōna of urbane wordliness M. /jaʁvɛ̃/ is purposefully cultivating. The fustian pomp the reader is treated to gives off an air of arrogance-born naïveté—much as if the erudite hack composing the presented profile of our very good friend were oblivious to the genteel PR she's lending the man of the hour.

For real though, it's yet another example of liberal old media platforming a repugnant fascist bozo by playing along with their intellectual academic act, fully falling for the "evil Albert Camus" charade. These profile pieces mistake a subtle undertone of contempt for actually effective interrogation or criticism of the subject's philosophy. Moldbug's ideas barely have the philosophical depth of a villain from a young adult novel. The criticism of the slimy fascist's neofeudal fantasies and his supporters' implementation of them amounts to no more than a literary raising of eyebrows. In the name of respectable bipartisan stiff-upper-lip propriety it's beyond the pale to call Curtis Yarvin's ideology the puerile parody of high school libertarianism it is. A veneer of eloquence for chuds to point at and say "behold, not all nazis are stupid: this guy knows words!"

Curtis Yarvin is just an internet age Julius Evola for the type of people who are somehow also impressed by Julius Evola.

This almost reads like tptacek doesn't understand why lucidity's piece a year ago was so effective and tried to write it from the opposite angle by punching down instead of punching up.

I'd have thought that a guy who writes on the internet like it's a competition sport could recognize the obvious problems of this, but maybe I'm just a vibe coding Youtuber.

Not high on the list of thought crimes, but a particular ick for me:

Also: 100% of all the Bash code you should author ever again

Why the bash hate?

I feel like this article might deserve its own post, because I think it’s the first time I’ve ever seen an attempted counter-sneer. it’s written like someone’s idea of what a sneer is (tpacek swears sometimes and says he doesn’t give a shit! so many paragraphs into giving a shit!) but all the content is awful bootlicking and points that don’t stand up to even mild scrutiny? and now I’m wondering if tpacek’s been reading us and that’s why he’s upset, or if this is what an LLM shits out if you ask it to write critihype in the tone of a sneer

Congrats!

Godspeed my friend. What was the turnaround, if I may ask? How long was the interview process etc?

congrats, that’s awesome news!

Congrats! :D

I’m helping with the church pride gloat, but I’m not going to signal anything because I honestly feel its not safe to.

Hell yeah!

Seems there's a lot of buzz about pride month this year. I've been to one pride parade as a teen and have approximately zero LGBT fashion items, but solidarity and visibility seems more important in recent years. I should find a necklace with trans flag colors or something.

lol jfc

Bashing my own head with a rock might seem harmful to my brain, but it also leaves minerals lodged in my skull. Minerals I can then sell to buy a bigger rock.

Sounds like they should nationalize OpenAI.

I just now heard about here. Reading about it on Wikipedia... they had a mathematical model that said their design shouldn't generate a sonic boom audible from ground level, but it was possible their mathematical model wasn't completely correct, so building a 1/3 scale prototype (apparently) validated their model? It's possible their model won't be right about their prospective design, but if it was right about the 1/3 scale then that is good evidence their model will be right? idk, ~~I'm not seeing much that is sneerable here~~, it seems kind of neat. Surely they wouldn't spend the money on the 1/3 scale prototype unless they actually needed the data (as opposed to it being a marketing ploy or worse yet a ploy for more VC funds)... surely they wouldn't?

iirc about the Concorde (one of only two supersonic passenger planes), it isn't so much that supersonic passenger planes aren't technologically viable, its more a question of economics (with some additional issues with noise pollution and other environmental issues). Limits on their flight path because of the sonic booms was one of the problems with the Concorde, so at least they won't have that problem. And as to the other questions... Boom Supersonic's webpage directly addresses these questions, but not in any detail, but at least they address them...

Looking for some more skeptical sources... this website seems interesting: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/will-boom-successfully-build-a-supersonic . They point out some big problems with Boom's approach. Boom is designing both its own engine and it's own plane, and the costs are likely to run into the limits of their VC funding even assuming nothing goes wrong. And even if they get a working plane and engine, the safety, cost, and reliability needed for a viable supersonic passenger plane might not be met. And... XB-1 didn't actually reach Mach 2.2 and was retired after only a few flight. Maybe it was a desperate ploy for more VC funding? Or maybe it had some unannounced issues? Okay... I'm seeing why this is potentially sneerable. There is a decent chance they entirely fail to deliver a plane with the VC funding they have, and even if they get that far it is likely to fail as a commercially viable passenger plane. Still, there is some possibility they deliver something... so eh, wait and see?